Anna Anderson

Anna Anderson (Tchaikovskaya, Manahan, Shantskovskaya) is the most famous of the women who posed as Grand Duchess Anastasia, daughter of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna. Let's try to figure out whether Anna Anderson was Princess Anastasia Romanova or is she just another swindler, an impostor, or just a sick person.

Unknown Russian, or Anastasia Romanova

The rumor that this woman, Grand Duchess Anastasia, excited the world after the Berlin police report on February 17, 1920 recorded a girl rescued from a suicide attempt. She had no documents with her and refused to give her name. She had light brown hair and piercing gray eyes. She spoke with a pronounced Slavic accent, so in her personal file there was an entry “unknown Russian”.

Since the spring of 1922, dozens of articles and books have been written about her. Anastasia Tchaikovskaya, Anna Anderson, later Anna Manahan (after her husband’s last name). These are the names of the same woman. The last name written on her gravestone is "Anastasia Manahan". She died on February 12, 1984, but even after death, her fate haunts neither her friends nor her enemies.

Family of Nicholas II

Why has there been a myth for a century about the salvation of Princess Anastasia and the only son of Nicholas II, Tsarevich Alexei? After all, only in 1991 was a common grave with the remains discovered royal family, among which the bodies of the prince and Anastasia were missing. And only in August 2007, near Yekaterinburg, the remains were discovered, presumably belonging to Tsarevich Alexei and the Grand Duchess. However, foreign experts have not confirmed this fact.

Confirmation of the death of Anastasia Romanova

In addition, there are a number of reasons that do not allow Anastasia to be considered dead along with the entire Royal Family on the night of July 17, 1918:

• “1. There is an eyewitness account who saw the wounded but alive Anastasia in a house on Voskresensky Prospekt in Yekaterinburg (almost opposite Ipatiev’s house) in the early morning of July 17, 1918; it was Heinrich Kleinbetzetl, a tailor from Vienna, an Austrian prisoner of war, who in the summer of 1918 worked in Yekaterinburg as an apprentice to the tailor Baudin. He saw her in Baudin's house in the early morning of July 17, a few hours after the brutal massacre in the basement of Ipatiev's house. It was brought by one of the guards (probably still from the previous more liberal composition of the guard - Yurovsky did not replace all the previous guards) - one of those few young guys who had long sympathized with the girls, the tsar’s daughters;
• 2. There is great confusion in the testimonies, reports and stories of the participants in this bloody massacre - even in different versions of the stories of the same participants;
• 3. It is known that the “Reds” were looking for the missing Anastasia for several months after the murder of the Royal Family;
• 4. It is known that one (or two?) women's corsets were not found. None of the “white” investigations answers all the questions, including the investigation of the Kolchak commission investigator Nikolai Sokolov;
• 5. The archives of the Cheka-KGB-FSB about the murder of the Royal Family and what the security officers led by Yurovsky in 1919 (a year after the execution) and MGB officers (Beria’s department) in 1946 did in the Koptyakovsky forest have not yet been opened. All documents known so far about the execution of the Royal Family (including Yurovsky’s “Note”) were obtained from other state archives (not from the archives of the FSB).”

The story of Anastasia Romanova

And so back to the story of Anna Anderson. A woman rescued from a suicide attempt was placed in the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse. She admitted that she tried to commit suicide, but refused to give a reason or make any comments. Upon examination, doctors discovered that she had given birth six months ago. For a girl “under the age of twenty,” this was an important circumstance. On the patient's chest and stomach they saw numerous scars from lacerations. On the head behind the right ear there was a 3.5 cm long scar, deep enough for a finger to go into it, as well as a scar on the forehead at the very roots of the hair. On the foot of his right leg there was a characteristic scar from a perforating wound. It fully corresponded to the shape and size of the wounds inflicted by the bayonet of a Russian rifle. There are cracks in the upper jaw.

The next day after the examination, she admitted to the doctor that she was afraid for her life: “She makes it clear that she does not want to identify herself for fear of persecution. The impression of restraint born of fear. More fear than restraint." The medical history also records that the patient has a congenital orthopedic foot disease hallux valgus of the third degree.

“The disease discovered in the patient by the doctors of the clinic in Daldorf absolutely coincided with the congenital disease of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. As one orthopedist put it: “It’s easier to find two girls of the same age with the same fingerprints than with signs of congenital hallux valgus.” The girls we are talking about also had the same height, foot size, hair and eye color, and portrait resemblance. From the medical record data it is clear that the traces of injuries to Anna Anderson fully correspond to those that, according to the forensic investigator Tomashevsky, were inflicted on Anastasia in the basement of Ipatiev’s house. The scar on the forehead also matches. Anastasia Romanova had such a scar since childhood, so she is the only one of the daughters of Nicholas II who always wore her hair with bangs.

Anna Anderson

Anna calls herself Anastasia

Later, Anna declared herself the daughter of Nikolai Romanov, Anastasia, and said that she came to Berlin in the hope of finding her aunt, Princess Irene, the sister of Queen Alexandra, but in the palace they did not recognize her or even listen to her. According to ‘Anastasia’, she attempted suicide out of shame and humiliation.

It was never possible to establish the exact data, and even the name of the patient (she was named Anna Anderson) - the ‘princess’ answered questions at random, and although she understood the questions in Russian, she answered them in some other Slavic language. However, someone later claimed that the patient spoke excellent Russian.

Her manners, gait, and communication with other people are not without a certain nobility. In addition, in conversations, the girl made quite competent judgments about various areas of life. She had an excellent understanding of art and music, knew geography well, and could freely list all the reigning persons of European states. In her appearance, the breed, “blue blood”, was clearly visible, inherent only to persons of the reigning dynasties or noble gentlemen and ladies close to the throne.

The news that a woman has shown up posing as the king's daughter reached Grand Duchess Olga Alexandrovna (Anastasia's aunt) and her mother Empress Maria Feodorovna (Anastasia's grandmother). According to their instructions, people who knew her well began to come to the patient. royal family and Anastasia. They looked closely at Anna, asked her questions about life in Russia, about her salvation, about the facts of Anastasia’s life, known only to those closest to the Tsar. The girl spoke confusedly and confusedly and amazed many with her knowledge. Despite the correct, but confusing answers and slight external resemblance, a verdict was made - this is not Anastasia.

Anna or Anastasia?

Interrogation of Anastasia Romanova

Another of the main arguments against Anderson being Anastasia was her categorical refusal to speak Russian. Many eyewitnesses also claimed that she generally understood very poorly when addressed in her native language. She herself, however, motivated her reluctance to speak Russian by the shock she experienced while under arrest, when the guards forbade members of the emperor’s family to communicate with each other in any other languages, since they could not understand them in this case. In addition, Anderson demonstrated almost complete ignorance of Orthodox customs and rituals.

Why did members of the House of Romanov in Europe and their relatives from the royal dynasties of Germany turn out to be opposed to it almost immediately, in the early 1920s? “Firstly, Anna Anderson spoke sharply about Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (“he is a traitor”) - the same one who, immediately after the abdication of Nicholas II, took his Guards crew away from Tsarskoe Selo and allegedly put on a red bow.

Secondly, she unintentionally revealed a big state secret, which concerned her mother’s brother (Empress Alexandra Feodorovna), about the arrival of her uncle Ernie of Hesse to Russia in 1916. The visit was associated with intentions to persuade Nicholas II to a separate peace with Germany. In the early twenties it was still a state secret

Thirdly, Anna-Anastasia herself was in such a difficult physical and psychological condition (consequences of severe injuries received in the basement of Ipatiev’s house, and the very difficult previous two years of wandering) that communicating with her was not easy for anyone. There is an important fourth reason, but first things first.

The question of succession to the Russian throne

In 1922, in the Russian Diaspora, the question of who would lead the dynasty was being decided for the place of the “Emperor in Exile.” The main contender was Kirill Vladimirovich Romanov. He, like most Russian emigrants, could not even imagine that the Bolshevik rule would last for seven long decades. The appearance of Anastasia caused confusion and division of opinion in the ranks of the monarchists. The subsequent information about the physical and mental ill health of the princess, and the presence of an heir to the throne who was born in an unequal marriage (either from a soldier, or from a lieutenant of peasant origin), all this did not contribute to her immediate recognition, not to mention the consideration of her candidacy to replace the head of the dynasty.

“The Romanovs did not want to see God’s anointed peasant son, who was either in Romania or in Soviet Russia. By the time she met her relatives in 1925, Anastasia was seriously ill with tuberculosis. Her weight barely reached 33 kg. The people surrounding Anastasia believed that her days were numbered. And who besides the mother needed her “bastard”? But she survived, and after meetings with Aunt Olya and other close people, she dreamed of meeting her grandmother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. She was waiting for recognition from her family, but instead, in 1928, on the second day after the death of the Dowager Empress, several members of the Romanov dynasty publicly renounced her, declaring that she was an impostor. The insult led to a break in the relationship.”

Impostor or Princess Anastasia Romanova?

The fact that Anna Anderson was an impostor, and not Grand Duchess Anastasia, was immediately reported to Grand Duchess Olga. The Grand Duchess cannot calm down in any way, she is tormented by doubts, and in the fall of 1925, taking with her Alexandra Tegleva, the former nanny of Anastasia and Maria and several ladies who are well acquainted with the royal family, she herself goes to Berlin.

When they met, Anastasia’s nanny did not recognize Anna as her ward, but the color of her eyes completely matched. Those eyes suddenly filled with tears of joy. Anna approached Tyeglyova and, hugging her tightly, began to cry. Looking at this touching scene, the arriving ladies were dumbfounded, but not the Grand Duchess. Having last seen Anastasia in 1916, she determined at first glance that the girl standing in front of her had nothing in common with her niece.

Answering questions from the ladies present, Anna Anderson revealed a good knowledge of the customs and practices of the imperial house. She even mentioned the finger injury, showing the scar on it to the arriving ladies. She also indicated the time - 1915, when the footman, slamming the carriage door hard, pinched the Grand Duchess's finger.

The girl affectionately called Tyeglyova Shura and talked about several funny cases from childhood. They really took place, and the former nanny hesitated. The woman was ready to recognize Anna Anderson as her pupil when she suddenly remembered the incident with the finger. It happened not to Anastasia, but to Maria - and not in a carriage, but in a train compartment. The charm woven by the stranger from dear memories dissipated. But there was still one more piece of evidence that needed to be verified.

Anastasia's big toes had a slight curvature. This doesn’t happen often with young girls, and Tegleva, overcoming her awkwardness, asked Anna Anderson to take off her shoes. She, not at all embarrassed, took off her shoes. The above toes did indeed look crooked, but the feet themselves did not match Anastasia's feet. The daughter of Nicholas II had them graceful and small, but here they are wide and much larger. And another verdict - an impostor.

Royal family

Life of Anastasia Romanova

The breakdown of relations with most of her relatives forced Anna to defend her rights in court. This is how forensic experts appeared in Anastasia’s life. The first graphological examination was made in 1927. It was performed by an employee of the Institute of Graphology in Prisna, Dr. Lucy Weizsäcker. Comparing the handwriting on the recently written samples with the handwriting on the samples written by Anastasia during the life of Nicholas II, Lucy Weizsäcker came to the conclusion that the samples belong to the same person.

In 1938, at the insistence of Anna, the trial began and ended only in 1977. It lasted 39 years and is one of the longest trials in modern history humanity. All this time, Anna lives either in America or in own home in the Black Forest village, given to her by the Prince of Saxe-Coburg.

In 1968, at the age of 70, Anderson married large industrialist John Manahan from Virginia, who dreamed of getting a real Russian princess as his wife, and became Anna Manahan. It is interesting that while she was in the United States, Anna met with Mikhail Golenevsky, who pretended to be “the miraculously saved Tsarevich Alexei,” and publicly recognized him as her brother.

In 1977, the trial was finally put to rest. The court denied Anna Manahan the right to inherit the property of the royal family, as it considered the available evidence of her relationship with the Romanovs insufficient. Having failed to achieve her goal, the mysterious woman dies on February 12, 1984.

Expert opinions about whether Anderson was the emperor's real daughter or a simple impostor remained controversial. When in 1991 it was decided to exhume the remains of the royal family, research was also carried out on Anna’s relationship with the Romanov family. DNA tests did not show Anderson to be a member of the Russian royal family.

Now I will give the floor to the American author Peter Kurt, whose book “Anastasia. The Riddle of Anna Anderson" (in Russian translation "Anastasia. The Riddle of the Grand Duchess"), according to many, is the best in the historiography of this riddle (and is wonderfully written). Peter Kurth knew Anna Anderson personally. This is what he wrote in the afterword to the Russian edition of his book:

Stories about Anastasia Romanova

“Truth is a snare; you can't have it without getting caught. You can’t catch her, she catches a person.”
Søren Kirkegaard

“Fiction must remain within the boundaries of the possible. The truth is no.”
Mark Twain

These quotes were sent to me by a friend in 1995, shortly after the British Home Office's Department of Forensic Sciences announced that mitochondrial DNA testing of "Anna Anderson" had conclusively proven that she was not Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. According to the conclusion of a team of British geneticists in Aldermaston, led by Dr Peter Gill, Ms Anderson's DNA does not match either the DNA of female skeletons recovered from a grave near Yekaterinburg in 1991 and allegedly belonging to the queen and her three daughters, nor with the DNA of Anastasia's maternal relatives and paternal line, residing in England and elsewhere. At the same time, a blood test of Karl Mauger, the great-nephew of missing factory worker Franziska Schanckowska, revealed a mitochondrial match, leading to the conclusion that Franziska and Anna Anderson are the same person. Subsequent tests in other laboratories looking at the same DNA led to the same conclusion.

... I knew Anna Anderson for more than ten years and was familiar with almost everyone who was involved in her struggle for recognition over the past quarter century: friends, lawyers, neighbors, journalists, historians, representatives of the Russian royal family and the royal families of Europe, Russian and European aristocracy - a wide circle of competent witnesses who, without hesitation, recognized her as the tsar’s daughter. My knowledge of her character, all the details of her case and, as it seems to me, probability and common sense - everything convinces me that she was a Russian Grand Duchess.

This belief of mine, although challenged (by DNA research), remains unshakable. Not being an expert, I cannot question Dr. Gill's results; if only these results had revealed that Ms. Anderson was not a member of the Romanov family, I might be able to accept them—if not easily now, then at least in time. However, no amount of scientific evidence or forensic evidence will convince me that Ms. Anderson and Franziska Schanckowska are the same person.

I categorically state that those who knew Anna Anderson, who lived with her for months and years, treated her and cared for her during her many illnesses, be it a doctor or a nurse, who observed her behavior, posture, demeanor, “They can’t believe that she was born in a village in East Prussia in 1896 and was the daughter and sister of beet farmers.”

So, in the case of Anastasia Romanova, we can state the following

• "1. Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova had a congenital deformity of both feet “Hallux Valgus” (bursitis of the big toe). This is visible not only in some photographs of the young Grand Duchess, but was confirmed after 1920 even by those people close to her (to Anastasia) who did not believe in the identity of Anna Anderson (for example, the Tsar’s younger sister, Olga Alexandrovna - and she knew the imperial children starting from their birth; this was also confirmed by Pierre Gilliard, the teacher of the royal children, who was at court since 1905). This was precisely a congenital case of the disease. The nanny (of little Anastasia), Alexandra (Shura) Tegleva, also confirmed congenital bunions of Anastasia’s big toes.
• 2. Anna Anderson also had a congenital deformity of both feet “Hallux Valgus” (bunions).
  In addition to the diagnosis of German doctors (in Daldorf in 1920), the diagnosis of congenital “Hallux Valgus” was made to Anna Anderson (Anna Tchaikovskaya) also by the Russian doctor Sergei Mikhailovich Rudnev at the clinic of St. Maria in the summer of 1925 (Anna Tchaikovskaya-Anderson was there in serious condition, with tuberculosis infections): “On her right leg I noticed a severe deformity, apparently congenital: the big toe bends to the right, forming a tumor.”
  Rudnev also noted that “Hallux Valgus” was on both of her legs. (See Peter Kurt. - Anastasia. The Mystery of the Grand Duchess. M., Zakharova Publishing House, p. 99). Dr. Sergei Rudnev cured and saved her life in 1925. Anna Anderson called him “my kind Russian professor who saved my life.”
• 3. On July 27, 1925, the Gilliard couple arrived in Berlin. Once again: Shura Gilliard-Tegleva was Anastasia’s nanny in Russia. They visited a very sick Anna Anderson in the clinic. Shura Tegleva asked to show her the patient’s legs (feet). The blanket was carefully turned away, Shura exclaimed: “With her [with Anastasia] it was the same as here: the right leg was worse than the left” (see the book by Peter Kurt, p. 121)
  Now, I will give once again the medical statistics of “Hallux Valgus” (bursitis of the big toe) for Russia:
  — “Hallux valgus” (HV) is present in 0.95% of the examined women;
  - 89% of them have the first degree of HV (= 0.85% of the women examined);
  - 1.6% of them have the third degree of HV (= 0.0152% of the women examined or 1: 6580);
  - statistics of congenital cases of “hallux valgus” (in modern Russia) is 8:142,000,000, or approximately 1:17,750,000!

We can assume that the statistics of congenital cases of “hallux valgus” in former Russia did not differ too much (even several times, 1: 10,000,000, or 1: 5,000,000). Thus, the probability that Anna Anderson was not Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova ranges from 1:5 million to 1:17 million.

Evidence of Anna's relationship to the Romano dynasty

It is also known that the statistics of congenital cases of this orthopedic disease in the West in the first half of the 20th century were also calculated in single cases for the entire orthopedic medical practice.
Thus, the very rare congenital deformity of the legs “hallux valgus” of Grand Duchess Anastasia and Anna Anderson puts an end to the tough (and sometimes cruel) debate between supporters and opponents of Anna Anderson.

Vladimir Momot published his article (“Gone with the Wind”) in February 2007 in the American newspaper “Panorama” (Los-Angeles, newspaper “Panorama”). He did a great job to restore the truth about Anna Anderson and the royal daughter Anastasia. It’s amazing how, for more than 80 years, no one thought to find out the medical statistics of hallux valgus foot deformity! Truly this story is reminiscent of the fairy tale about the glass slipper!

Now we can be completely and irrevocably sure that Anna Anderson and Grand Duchess Anastasia are one and the same person.”

So who is Anna Anderson really, an impostor or Anastasia Romanova? If Anna Anderson and Grand Duchess Anastasia are one and the same person, then it remains to be seen whose remains were buried under the name of Grand Duchess Anastasia in St. Petersburg in July 1998 (however, there are doubts about other remains buried then), and whose the remains were found in the summer of 2007 in the Koptyakovsky forest.

Anastasia

And finally, an excerpt from S. Sadalsky’s story “The Riddle of the Princess”: Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova - June 5, 1901 - Peterhof - July 17, 1918, Yekaterinburg. “In the early 80s, when, by the will of fate, I began to visit Germany quite often, I showed great interest in the old Russian emigrants who, like fragments of Russian culture, were still preserved there. I reached out to them, and they reached out to me. The Soviets at that time were afraid of them like hell.

My curiosity was rewarded by meeting Princess Anastasia, who, before her death, came to Hanover to say goodbye to her friends and youth.

I told her, naturally, in Russian (she answered in German), that I had seen the Ipatievs’ house in Sverdlovsk during my tour with the Sovremennik Theater, that the city’s residents extremely revered this place and brought flowers to it.

Then, by order of the first secretary of the regional party committee, Yeltsin, the house was demolished overnight, but the residents took everything home brick by brick and kept it as a shrine.

The princess listened and cried and asked me to bow to that place. She died in America in 1984."

P.S.: “Holy Princess Anastasia The youngest daughter, Anastasia, was born in 1901. At first she was a tomboy and the family jester. She was shorter than others; she had a straight nose and beautiful gray eyes. Later, she was distinguished by her good manners and subtlety of mind, had the talent of a comedian and loved to make everyone laugh. She was also extremely kind and loved animals. Anastasia had a small Japanese dog, the favorite of the whole family. Anastasia carried this dog in her arms when she went down to the Yekaterinburg basement on the fateful night of July 4/17, and the little dog was killed along with her.”

Based on materials from the article by Boris Romanov “The Crystal Slippers of Princess Anastasia”

Comments

Vitaliy Pavlovich Romanov

I am also convinced that Toska was very disturbing
Kirill and his pack to bask in the royal treasury, and
Olya dreamed of seizing the throne. The greed of it
family is palpable to me.

The Grand Duke himself is at your service.
Romanov Vitaly Pavlovich.

Romanov Vitaly Pavlovich

My last name is Romanov. I have never been interested in my origins. Now I have become an old man and
I really want to know who I am? Maybe also a charlatan like Anderson? And Anastasia lived for 17 years
in Russia, but did not know the language of my homeland. The conclusion suggests itself - your Anderson is
scammer. Romanov V.P. himself is at your service...

Victoria

You know, I was never interested in the Second World War or any revolution. I was always interested in the Romanovs, the Romanov family, where they were born, how 300 years of the throne were celebrated. But most of all I was interested in Anastasia. Did she survive, or was she saved? This question I’ve been interested in her for many years. I just can’t believe that she, like everyone else, was shot in the basement. She suffered for so many years, proving that she was the one, Anastasia Romanova. Do you know? I believe that “Anna Anderson” was that Anastasia to her. After all, while she was walking through the forest, or whatever it was, for 2 years, her toes became crooked. And before, as Tegleva said, she had soft, tender legs. I wish I could walk for 2 years! !!No, it was Anastasia!

Ural historians found the remains of the royal family back in 1976, but the excavations themselves were carried out only in 1991. Then, with the help of many examinations, scientists were able to prove that the found fragments of bodies belonged to Tsar Nicholas, Empress Alexandra, three daughters - Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia, as well as their servants. The fate of only the bodies of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria, who were not found in the general burial, remained mysterious. http://ura.ru/content/svrd/16-09-2011/news/1052134206.html.

Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova - a great mystery

Princesses.

July 17" href="/text/category/17_iyulya/" rel="bookmark">July 17, 1918, Yekaterinburg) - Grand Duchess, fourth daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna. Shot along with her family in the Ipatiev 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. Previously, in 1981, they were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad. Memory - July 4 according to the Julian calendar.

Birth

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:

The entry in the emperor's diary contradicts the statements of some researchers who believe that Nicholas, disappointed by the birth of his daughter, for a long time did not dare to visit the newborn and his wife.

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

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, 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.

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, 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 a 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.

The First World War turned out to be a disaster for the Russian Empire and for the Romanov dynasty. By February 1917, having lost hundreds of thousands killed, the country faltered. In the capital, Petrograd, people staged food riots, students joined the striking workers, and the troops sent to restore order themselves rebelled. Tsar Nicholas II, hastily summoned from the front, where he personally commanded imperial army, gave an ultimatum: renunciation. For the sake of himself and his sickly 12-year-old son, he abandoned the throne that his dynasty had occupied since 1613.
The provisional government placed the former emperor's family under house arrest in Tsarskoe Selo, a comfortable ensemble of palaces near Petrograd. Together with Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and Tsarevich Alexei, there were the Tsar’s four daughters, Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, the eldest of whom was 22 years old, and the youngest 16 years old. Apart from constant supervision, the family experienced virtually no hardships during their imprisonment in Tsarskoye Selo.
By the summer of 1917, Kerensky began to worry about conspiracies: on the one hand, the Bolsheviks sought to eliminate the former Tsar; on the other hand, the monarchists who remained loyal to the tsar wanted to save Nicholas II and return the throne to him. For safety's sake, Kerensky decided to send his royal captives to Tobolsk, a remote Siberian town more than 1,500 kilometers east of Ural mountains. On August 14, Nicholas II, his wife and five children, accompanied by about 40 servants, set off from Tsarskoye Selo on a six-day journey on a heavily guarded train.
...In November, the Bolsheviks seized power and concluded a separate peace with Germany and Austria-Hungary (the Brest-Litovsk Peace Treaty was signed in March 1918). The new leader of Russia, Vladimir Lenin, faced many problems, including what to do with former king, who has now become his prisoner.
In April 1918, as the White Army, supporters of the Tsar, advanced towards Tobolsk along the Trans-Siberian Railway, Lenin ordered the transfer of the Tsar's family to Yekaterinburg, which was at the western end of the road. Nicholas II and his family were settled in the two-story residence of the merchant Ipatiev, giving it the ominous name “House of Special Purpose.”
The guards, most of whom were former factory workers, were commanded by the rough and often drunk Alexander Avdeev, who liked to call the former Tsar Nicholas the Bloody.
At the beginning of July 1918, Avdeev was replaced by Yakov Yurovsky, the head of the local Cheka detachment. Two days later, a courier arrived from Moscow with orders to prevent the former Tsar from falling into the hands of the Whites. The pro-monarchist army, joining the 40,000-strong Czech corps, steadily advanced west towards Yekaterinburg, despite the resistance of the Bolsheviks.
Somewhere after midnight, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Yurovsky woke up the members of the royal family, ordered them to get dressed and ordered them to gather in one of the rooms on the first floor. Chairs were brought to Alexandra and the sick Alexei, Nicholas II, the princesses, Doctor Botkin and four servants remained standing. After reading out the death sentence, Yurovsky shot Nicholas II in the head - this was a signal to the other participants in the execution to open fire at pre-specified targets. Those who did not die immediately were bayoneted.
The bodies were thrown into a truck and taken to an abandoned mine outside the city, where they were mutilated, doused with acid and dumped in an adit. On July 17, the government in Moscow received an encrypted message from Yekaterinburg: “Inform Sverdlov that all members of the family suffered the same fate as its head. Officially, the family died during the evacuation.”
At a meeting of the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee on July 18, its chairman reported a telegram received via direct wire about the execution of the former tsar.
July 19 by the Council People's Commissars A decree was published on the confiscation of the property of Nikolai Romanov and members of the former imperial house. All their property was declared the property of the Soviet Republic. The execution of the Romanovs in Yekaterinburg was officially published on July 22. The day before, a message about this was made at a workers' meeting in the city theater, greeted with a stormy expression of delight...
Rumors arose almost immediately about how true this message was. The version that Nicholas II was actually executed on the night of July 16-17 was actively discussed, but the lives of the former queen, her son and four daughters were spared. However, since the former queen and her children never appeared anywhere, the conclusion about the death of the entire family became generally accepted. True, from time to time, contenders for the role of survivors of this terrible tragedy appeared. They were considered impostors, and the legend that not all the Romanovs died that night was considered a fantasy.
...In 1988, with the advent of glasnost, sensational facts were revealed. The son of Yakov Yurovsky handed over to the authorities a secret report detailing the location and circumstances of the burial of the bodies. From 1988 to 1991, searches and excavations continued. As a result, nine skeletons were found in the indicated location. After careful computer analysis (comparing skulls with photographs) and comparing genes (the so-called comparison of DNA fingerprints), it became obvious that the five skeletons belonged to Nicholas II, Alexandra and three of the five children. Four skeletons - three servants and Doctor Botkin - the family doctor.
The discovery of the remains lifted the veil of secrecy, but also added fuel to the fire. Two skeletons were missing from the burial found near Yekaterinburg. Experts came to the conclusion that there are no remains of Tsarevich Alexei and one of the Grand Duchesses. It is not known whose skeleton is missing, Maria or Anastasia. The question remains open: fifty-fifty.

The memories of contemporaries indicate that Anastasia was well educated, knew how to dance, knew foreign languages, participated in home performances... She had a funny nickname in her family: “Shvibzik” for her playfulness. She seemed to be made of mercury, and not of flesh and blood, she was very witty and had an undoubted gift of mime. She was so cheerful and so able to dispel the wrinkles of anyone who was out of sorts that some of those around her began to call Her “Sunbeam”
...Life youngest daughter Nicholas II ended at age 17. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, she and her relatives were shot in Yekaterinburg.
Or weren't they shot? 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. True, a small detail casts doubt on its authenticity - Anastasia had a height of 158 cm, and the buried skeleton was 171 cm... Well, the princess didn’t grow up in the grave?
There are other inconsistencies that allow us to hope for a miracle...

Despite the apparent transparency of the history of the death of the family of the last Russian Tsar, there are still blank spots in it. Too many people were not interested in finding out the truth, but in creating the illusion of truth. Multiple examinations carried out in different laboratories in different countries of the world brought confusion to the matter rather than clarity.
It is well known that in the early 90s the burial of the royal family was discovered near Yekaterinburg, but the remains of Anastasia (or Maria) and Tsarevich Alexei were not found. However, another skeleton, "number 6", was later found and buried as belonging to the Grand Duchess. However, a small detail casts doubt on its authenticity - Anastasia had a height of 158 cm, and the buried skeleton was 171 cm...
It is less known that Nicholas II had seven twin families, and their fate is not clear. Two judicial determinations in Germany, based on DNA examinations of the Ekaterinburg remains, showed that they are one hundred percent consistent with the Filatov family - doubles of the family of Nicholas II... So, perhaps, it remains to be seen whose remains are buried under the name of Grand Duchess Anastasia in St. Petersburg in July 1998 (there are doubts about other remains buried then), and whose remains were found in the summer of 2007 in the Koptyakovsky forest.
Official point of view: ALL members of the family of Nicholas II and himself were shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918, and no one managed to escape. The contenders for the “role” of the survivors Anastasia and Alexei are scammers and impostors who have a vested interest in receiving Nicholas II’s foreign bank deposits. According to various estimates, the amount of these deposits in England ranges from 100 billion to 2 trillion dollars.
This official point of view is contradicted by facts and evidence that do not allow Anastasia to be considered dead along with the entire Royal Family on the night of July 17, 1918:
- There is an eyewitness account who saw the wounded but alive Anastasia in a house on Voskresensky Prospekt in Yekaterinburg (almost opposite Ipatiev’s house) in the early morning of July 17, 1918; it was Heinrich Kleinbetzetl, a tailor from Vienna, an Austrian prisoner of war, who in the summer of 1918 worked in Yekaterinburg as an apprentice to the tailor Baudin. He saw her in Baudin's house in the early morning of July 17, a few hours after the brutal massacre in the basement of Ipatiev's house. It was brought by one of the guards (probably still from the previous more liberal guard composition - Yurovsky did not replace all the previous guards), - one of those few young guys who had long sympathized with girls, the Tsar's daughters;
- There is confusion in the testimonies, reports and stories of the participants in this bloody massacre - even in different versions of the stories of the same people;
- It is known that the “Reds” were looking for the missing Anastasia for several months after the murder of the Royal Family;
- It is known that one (or two?) women's corsets were not found.
- It is known that the Bolsheviks conducted secret negotiations with the Germans about handing over the Russian Tsarina and her children to them in exchange for Russian political prisoners in Germany after the tragedy in Yekaterinburg!
- In 1925, A. Anderson met with Olga Alexandrovna Romanova-Kulikovskaya, the sister of Nicholas II and Anastasia’s aunt, who could not help but recognize her niece. Olga Alexandrovna treated her with warmth and warmth. “I’m not able to grasp this with my mind,” she said after the meeting, but my heart tells me that it’s Anastasia!” Later, the Romanovs decided to abandon the girl, declaring her an impostor.
- the archives of the Cheka-KGB-FSB about the murder of the Royal Family and what the security officers led by Yurovsky in 1919 (a year after the execution) and MGB officers (Beria’s department) did in the Koptyakovsky forest in 1946 have not yet been opened. All documents known so far about the execution of the Royal Family (including Yurovsky’s “Note”) were obtained from other state archives (not from the FSB archives).
If all members of the Royal Family were killed, then why do we still not have answers to all these questions?

Fräulein Unbekannt (Unbekannt - unknown)

Under the name Fräulein Unbekant, a girl rescued from a suicide attempt was registered in the Berlin police report on February 17, 1920. She had no documents with her and refused to give her name. She had light brown hair and piercing gray eyes. She spoke with a pronounced Slavic accent, so in her personal file there was an entry “unknown Russian”.
Since the spring of 1922, dozens of articles and books have been written about her. Anastasia Tchaikovskaya, Anna Anderson, later Anna Manahan (after her husband's last name). These are the names of the same woman. The last name written on her gravestone is Anastasia Manahan. She died on February 12, 1984, but even after death, her fate haunts neither her friends nor her enemies.
...That evening, February 17, she was admitted to the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse. At the end of March she was transferred to a neurological clinic in Daldorf with a diagnosis of “mental illness of a depressive nature,” where she lived for two years. In Dahldorf, when examined on March 30, she admitted that she had tried to commit suicide, but refused to give a reason or give any comments. During the examination, her weight was recorded - 50 kilograms, height - 158 centimeters. Upon examination, doctors discovered that she had given birth six months ago. For a girl “under the age of twenty,” this was an important circumstance.
They saw numerous scars from lacerations on the patient’s chest and stomach. On the head behind the right ear there was a 3.5 cm long scar, deep enough for a finger to go into it, as well as a scar on the forehead at the very roots of the hair. On the foot of his right leg there was a characteristic scar from a perforating wound. It fully corresponded to the shape and size of the wounds inflicted by a Russian rifle bayonet. There are cracks in the upper jaw. The next day after the examination, she admitted to the doctor that she was afraid for her life: “She makes it clear that she does not want to identify herself for fear of persecution. The impression of restraint born of fear. More fear than restraint." The medical history also records that the patient has a congenital orthopedic foot disease hallux valgus of the third degree.
The disease discovered in the patient by the doctors of the clinic in Daldorf absolutely coincided with the congenital disease of Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. The girl had the same height, foot size, hair and eye color and portrait resemblance to the Russian princess, and from the medical card data it is clear that the traces of injuries to “Fräulein Unbekant” fully correspond to those that, according to the forensic investigator Tomashevsky, were inflicted on Anastasia in the basement of Ipatiev’s house . The scar on the forehead also matches. Anastasia Romanova had such a scar since childhood, so she was the only one of the daughters of Nicholas II who always wore her hair with bangs.
In the end, the girl named 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...
Over the next 50 years, speculation and court cases continued about whether Anna Anderson was Anastasia Romanova, but in the end she was never recognized as a “real” princess. Nevertheless, fierce debate about the mystery of Anna Anderson continues to this day...
Opponents: Since March 1927, opponents of the recognition of Anna Anderson as Anastasia have put forward the version that the girl posing as the saved Anastasia was in fact a native of a peasant family (from East Prussia) named Franziska Shantskovskaya.
This point of view is confirmed by a 1995 examination carried out by the Department of Forensic Medicine of the British Home Office. According to the results of the examination, studies of the mitochondrial DNA of “Anna Anderson” convincingly prove that she is not Grand Duchess Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. According to the conclusion of a team of British geneticists in Aldermaston, led by Dr Peter Gill, Ms Anderson's DNA does not match either the DNA of female skeletons recovered from a grave near Yekaterinburg in 1991 and allegedly belonging to the queen and her three daughters, nor with the DNA of Anastasia's maternal relatives and paternal line, residing in England and elsewhere. At the same time, a blood test of Karl Mauger, the great-nephew of missing factory worker Franziska Schanckowska, revealed a mitochondrial match, leading to the conclusion that Franziska and Anna Anderson are the same person. Tests in other laboratories looking at the same DNA led to the same conclusion. Although there are doubts about the source of DNA samples from Anna Anderson (she was cremated, and the samples were taken from the residual materials of a surgical operation carried out 20 years before the examination).
These doubts are aggravated by the testimony of people who knew Anna-Anastasia personally:
“... I knew Anna Anderson for more than ten years and was familiar with almost everyone who was involved in her struggle for recognition over the past quarter century: friends, lawyers, neighbors, journalists, historians, representatives of the Russian royal family and the royal families of Europe , Russian and European aristocracy - a wide range of competent witnesses who, without hesitation, recognized her as the tsar’s daughter. My knowledge of her character, all the details of her case and, as it seems to me, probability and common sense - everything convinces me that she was a Russian Grand Duchess.
This belief of mine, although challenged (by DNA research), remains unshakable. Not being an expert, I cannot question Dr. Gill's results; if only these results had revealed that Ms. Anderson was not a member of the Romanov family, I might be able to accept them—if not easily now, then at least in time. However, no amount of scientific evidence or forensic evidence will convince me that Ms. Anderson and Franziska Schanckowska are the same person.
I categorically state that those who knew Anna Anderson, who lived with her for months and years, treated her and cared for her during her many illnesses, be it a doctor or a nurse, who observed her behavior, posture, demeanor, “They can’t believe that she was born in a village in East Prussia in 1896 and was the daughter and sister of beet farmers.”
Peter Kurt, author of the book “Anastasia. The Riddle of Anna Anderson" (in Russian translation "Anastasia. The Riddle of the Grand Duchess")

Anastasia in Anna, in spite of everything, was recognized by some foreign relatives of the Romanov family, as well as Tatyana Botkina-Melnik, the widow of Doctor Botkin, who died in Yekaterinburg.
Supporters: Supporters of recognizing Anna Anderson as Anastasia point out that Franziska Shantskovskaya was five years older than Anastasia, taller, wore shoes four sizes larger, never gave birth to children and had no orthopedic foot diseases. In addition, Franziska Schanzkowska disappeared from home at a time when “Fräulein Unbekant” was already in the Elisabeth Hospital on Lützowstrasse.”
The first graphological examination was made at the request of the Gessenskys in 1927. It was performed by an employee of the Institute of Graphology in Prisna, Dr. Lucy Weizsäcker. Comparing the handwriting on the recently written samples with the handwriting on the samples written by Anastasia during the life of Nicholas II, Lucy Weizsäcker came to the conclusion that the samples belong to the same person.
In 1960, by decision of the Hamburg Court, graphologist Dr. Minna Becker was appointed as a graphological expert. Four years later, reporting on her work before the Supreme Court of Appeal in the Senate, the gray-haired Dr. Becker said: “I have never seen so many identical features in two texts written by different people.” Another important note from the doctor is worth mentioning. Handwriting samples in the form of texts written in German and Russian were provided for examination. In her report, speaking about Ms. Anderson’s Russian texts, Dr. Becker noted: “It seems as if she was again in a familiar environment.”
Due to the inability to compare fingerprints, anthropologists were brought in to investigate. Their opinion was considered by the court as “probability close to certainty.” Research carried out in 1958 at the University of Mainz by Doctors Eickstedt and Klenke, and in 1965 by the founder of the German Anthropological Society, Professor Otto Rehe, led to the same result, namely:
1. Mrs. Anderson is not the Polish factory worker Franziska Schanckowska.
2. Mrs. Anderson is Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.
Opponents pointed to the discrepancy between the shape of Anderson’s right ear and Anastasia Romanova’s ear, citing an examination done back in the twenties.
These doubts were resolved by one of the most famous forensic experts in Germany, Dr. Moritz Furthmeier. In 1976, Dr. Furthmeyer discovered that, by an absurd accident, experts used a photograph of Dahldorf's patient, taken from an inverted negative, to compare the ears. That is, the right ear of Anastasia Romanova was compared with the left ear of “Fräulein Unbekant” and naturally received a negative result for identity. When comparing the same photograph of Anastasia with a photograph of Anderson (Tchaikovsky)'s right ear, Moritz Furthmeier obtained a match in seventeen anatomical positions. To recognize the identification in a West German court, the coincidence of five positions out of twelve was quite sufficient.
One can only guess what her fate would have been like had it not been for that fatal mistake. Even in the sixties, this error formed the basis of the decision of the Hamburg court, and then of the highest appeal court in the Senate.
...In recent years, another important consideration has been added to the mystery of identifying Anna Anderson as Anastasia, which was previously ignored for some unknown reason.
We are talking about a congenital deformation of the feet, which was known from the childhood of the Grand Duchess and which Anna Anderson also had. The fact is that this is a very rare disease. As a rule, this disease appears in women aged 30-35 years. As for cases of congenital disease, they are isolated and extremely rare. Out of 142 million people in Russia, only eight cases of this disease have been registered over the past ten years.
To put it simply, the statistics for a congenital case are approximately 1:17. Thus, with a probability of 99.9999947, Anna Anderson was indeed Grand Duchess Anastasia!
These statistics refute the negative results of DNA tests conducted on the remains. fabric materials in years, since the reliability of DNA research does not exceed 1:6000 - three thousand times less reliable than the statistics of Anna-Anastasia! At the same time, the statistics of a congenital disease are actually statistics of artifacts (there is no doubt about this), while DNA research is a complex procedure in which the possibility of accidental genetic contamination of the original tissue materials, or even their malicious substitution, cannot be ruled out.

Possible reasons for non-recognition
Why did some members of the House of Romanov in Europe and their relatives from the royal dynasties of Germany almost immediately, in the early 1920s, turn out to be sharply opposed to Anna-Anastasia? Possible reasons some.
First, Anna Anderson spoke harshly about Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich (“he is a traitor”), while the latter laid claim to the empty throne.
Secondly, she unintentionally revealed a big state secret about the arrival of her uncle Ernie of Hesse to Russia in 1916. The visit was associated with the intention of persuading Nicholas II to a separate peace with Germany. This failed, and when leaving the Alexander Palace, Ernie even said to his sister, Empress Alexandra: “You are no longer the sun for us” - that’s what all German relatives called Alix in her childhood. In the early twenties, this was still a state secret, and Ernie Hesse had no choice but to accuse Anastasia of slander.
Thirdly, by the time she met her relatives in 1925, Anna-Anastasia herself was in a very difficult physical and psychological condition. She was sick with tuberculosis. Her weight barely reached 33 kg. The people surrounding Anastasia believed that her days were numbered. But she survived, and after meetings with Aunt Olya and other close people, she dreamed of meeting her grandmother, the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna. She was waiting for recognition from her family, but instead, in 1928, on the second day after the death of the Dowager Empress, several members of the Romanov dynasty publicly renounced her, declaring that she was an impostor. The insult led to a break in the relationship.
In addition, in 1922, in the Russian Diaspora, the question of who would lead the dynasty and take the place of the “Emperor in Exile” was being decided. The main contender was Kirill Vladimirovich Romanov. He, like most Russian emigrants, could not even imagine that the Bolshevik rule would last for seven long decades. Anastasia's appearance in Berlin in the summer of 1922 caused confusion and division of opinion among the monarchists. The subsequent information about the physical and mental ill health of the princess, and the presence of an heir to the throne who was born in an unequal marriage (either from a soldier, or from a lieutenant of peasant origin), all this did not contribute to her immediate recognition, not to mention the consideration of her candidacy to replace the head of the dynasty.
...This could conclude the story of the missing Russian princess. It is amazing that for more than 80 years no one thought to find out the medical statistics of hallux valgus foot deformity! It is strange that the results of an absurd examination comparing “the right ear of Anastasia Romanova with the left ear of “Fräulein Unbekant” (!), served as the basis for fateful court decisions, contrary to multiple graphological examinations and personal evidence. It is surprising that serious people can seriously discuss the issue of the “identity” of an illiterate Polish peasant woman with a Russian princess, and believe that Franziska could mystify those around her for so many years without revealing her true origin... And lastly, it is known that Anastasia gave birth to a son in the fall of 1919 , somewhere on the border with Romania (at that time she was hiding from the Reds under the name Tchaikovskaya, after the name of the man who saved her and took her to Romania). What is the fate of this son? Really, no one asked? Maybe it is his DNA that should be compared with the DNA of the Romanov relatives, and not the dubious “tissue materials”?

JUST THE FACTS:
Since the murder of the royal family in Yekaterinburg, about 30 pseudo-Anastasii have appeared in the world (according to data). Some of them did not even speak Russian, explaining that the stress they experienced in the Ipatiev House made them forget their native speech. The Bank of Geneva created special service for their “identification”, the exam of which none of the candidates could pass. True, the bank’s interest in identifying the heiress of an amount of approximately $500 billion is also not obvious.
Among the many obvious impostors, in addition to Anna Anderson, several more contenders stand apart.

ELEANOR KRUGER
In the early 20s, a young woman with an aristocratic bearing appeared in the Bulgarian village of Grabarevo. She 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. Bulgarian researcher Blagoy Emmanuilov believes that Eleanor is the missing daughter of Nicholas II, and George is Tsarevich Alexei. In his conclusions, he relies on Eleanor’s memories of how “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.”
In addition, in the early 50s, in the Bulgarian Black Sea city of Balchik, a Russian White Guard, describing in detail the life of the executed imperial family, said in front of witnesses that Nicholas II ordered him to personally take Anastasia and Alexei out of the palace and hide them in the provinces. He also claimed to have taken the children to Turkey. 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 ill and talk about him as tall, weak and pale young man. Russian authors also describe the hemophiliac Prince Alexei in a similar way. In 1995, the remains of Eleanor and George were exhumed 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.

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilieva
In April 1934, a young woman, very thin and poorly dressed, entered the Church of the Resurrection at the Semenovskoye cemetery. She came to confession, and Hieromonk Afanasy (Alexander Ivanshin) directed her.
During confession, the woman announced to the priest that she was the daughter of the former Tsar Nicholas II - Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. When asked how she managed to escape execution, the stranger replied: “You can’t talk about that.”
She was prompted to seek help by the need to get a passport to try to leave the country. They managed to get a passport, but someone reported to the NKVD about the activities of a “counter-revolutionary monarchist group,” and everyone who helped the woman was arrested.
Case No. 000 is still kept in the State Archives today. Russian Federation(GARF) and is not subject to disclosure. A woman who called herself Anastasia, after endless prisons and concentration camps, was sent to a mental hospital for compulsory treatment by the verdict of a Special Meeting of the NKVD. The sentence turned out to be indefinite, and in 1971 she died in a psychiatric hospital on the island of Sviyazhsk. Buried in an unknown grave.
Ivanova-Vasilieva spent almost forty years within the walls of medical institutions, but she was never tested for her blood type (!). Not a single questionnaire, not a single protocol contains the date and month of birth. Only the year and place that coincide with the data of Anastasia Romanova. Investigators, speaking about the defendant in the third person, called her “Princess Romanova,” and not an impostor. And knowing that the woman was living on a fake passport filled out in her own hand, the investigators never asked her a question about her real name.

Natalia Petrovna Bilikhodze
N. Bilikhodze lived in Sukhumi, then Tbilisi. In 1994 and 1997, she appealed to the Tbilisi court to have her recognized as Anastasia. However, the court hearings did not take place due to her failure to appear. She claimed that the WHOLE family was saved. She died in 2000. Posthumous genetic examination did not confirm her relationship with the Royal Family (more precisely, with the remains buried in 1998 in St. Petersburg).
Yekaterinburg researcher Vladimir Viner believes that Natalia Belikhodze was a member of a backup family (the Berezkins) who lived in Sukhumi. This explains her external resemblance to Anastasia and the positive results of “22 examinations conducted by commission and judicial procedure in three states - Georgia, Russia and Latvia.” According to them, there was “a number of matching features that can only be found in one out of 700 billion . cases." Perhaps the story of the confession was started in anticipation of the monetary inheritance of the royal family, with the goal of returning it to Russia.

“Where is the truth,” you ask. I will answer: “The truth is out there somewhere...”, because it is “Fiction must remain within the boundaries of the possible. Truth is not” (Mark Twain).

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

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

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

Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova.

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

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

Moscow, Kuznetsky Most, 24. Assistance to political prisoners. Ekaterina Pavlovna personally Peshkova.

“Hello, beloved, dear Ekaterina Pavlovna! I send you my heartfelt greetings. Forgive me for disturbing you, but I decided to make a small request. I ask you, do not refuse, if you can, help me in view of the fact that some things were stolen from me in the clothing warehouse where I am, and there is no one to ask... When I was in Moscow in 1934, I received foreign things through the Swedish embassy from my friend Gretti Janson... Please, if you can, send me a coat and stockings as soon as possible, for which I will be sincerely grateful and will try to thank you as soon as possible...

The daughter of the former Nicholas II is writing to you, 20 years ago I was saved from death, a wounded 15-year-old girl... Now I am 36 years old. I personally suffered a lot, I experienced horror. And now I’m glad that my relatives found out about me, and we should be together. I don’t know whether they will give me away or not. I am in prison only for my origin; I am not guilty of anything else. I had a fake passport in the name of Ivanova-Vasilieva, but for this I served...

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

Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilieva wrote dozens of letters and petitions. All of them are filed in her medical history and, naturally, did not leave the closed institution. She, of course, guessed that she was writing to nowhere, because she never received an answer. The prisoner tried to smuggle her letters through the nurses, as evidenced by the entry in the medical history, and one day she miraculously succeeded. There was a man who believed in the story of the “queen” so much that he was not afraid to violate the strict orders of the special corps and take letters out of the regime institution, and then deliver them to Moscow. It was a courageous act that involved enormous risk. The leaves from the dungeons, covered with flying handwriting, reached the addressee - Ekaterina Peshkova. And they went into the archives.

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

Nun Valeria Makeeva, who shared a ward with Ivanova-Vasilyeva, told me that in the hospital Nadezhda Vladimirovna was not considered an impostor, and every year on her name day, January 4, tea was even held in the building. Nurses and nannies brought baked goods from home with the words: “Today the queen is celebrating!” The head physician once asked Valeria: “What do you think, maybe our patient is Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna?”

A participant in the Great Patriotic War, Antonina Mikhailovna Belova, who was sent to a prison hospital for “seditious entries in her diary” and from 1952 to 1956 was also in the same ward with the “queen,” wrote in a letter to the editor: “Knowing a lot about “treatment,” I I was silent about everything after leaving the hospital. But, having heard about your article, I decided to talk about my face-to-face meeting with Anastasia. I was prompted by the duty of a Christian. She was the true youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II. She had an almost non-Russian face: almost oval shape, the nose is longer than usual, with a slight hump. Dark eyebrows are shifted to the bridge of the nose, the eyes are large and sharp. What amazed me most was the out-of-date, beautiful, high hairstyle... Anastasia told me about her miraculous salvation, about how an earring with diamonds was torn right out of her ear. She lifted a strand of hair: half of her ear from below was ugly torn off... I was numb. There is no doubt left in me that there is a great prisoner in department No. 9.”

Anastasia said: “I lost consciousness and don’t remember anything else. I woke up in some basement. So tragically alone of the entire House of Romanov, unfortunately, I survived; more than once, envying members of the executed family, she asked for death.”

Moscow, Kuznetsky Most, 24, - Pompolit's address, like a password, was passed from hand to hand. This was the last hope for “enemies of the people” and members of their families.

For fifteen years, until July 1938, a service operated legally in the USSR, which tried in every possible way to alleviate the lot of people who had fallen under the millstone of repression! Of course, unlike the political Red Cross, which existed until 1922, Pompolit could not provide legal protection, but its help was still invaluable. He supported prisoners and their families with money, food, clothing, medicine, and petitioned for a review of the case and a reduction in the term of imprisonment. For the last six months, the organization has practically not worked. In 1937, Ekaterina Pavlovna’s assistant Mikhail Vinaver was given 25 years, and Peshkova was powerless. She couldn't help anyone anymore.

On the letter from Ivanova-Vasilieva there is a handwritten note from Ekaterina Pavlovna: “Mentally ill. E.P.” This meant that the letters would not be processed and would remain hidden. But was it even possible to do anything at that time without risking, at best, being branded crazy?

I first came across the name Ivanova-Vasilieva in the investigative file of A.F. Ivanshin. This is the work of an underground church-monarchist organization in 1934,” says Liya Dolzhanskaya. - Several letters from Ivanova-Vasilieva were found in the Pompolit archive. Thus, a letter from “Romanova Anastasia Nikolaevna” from the Vishera concentration camp (1933) has been preserved, where she asks to inform her aunt Ksenia Aleksandrovna Dolgorukova, who lives in Germany, so that she can provide her with financial support. Why did Ekaterina Pavlovna mark it as “mentally ill”? There may be two options here. Perhaps it seemed to her, and this is very likely, that the author of the letters really suffered from mental illness (after all, the royal family was shot, and this known fact). At the same time, Ekaterina Pavlovna understood that it was possible to save the life of the long-suffering prisoner only by declaring her “mentally ill.” This note appears only on the last letters, dated 1938, when Pompolit practically completed his work.

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

Sick impostor or Grand Duchess?

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

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

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

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

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

I have already seen this document in the archives of the Kazan psychiatric hospital. Here are some fragments: “The subject is of average height, asthenic build, looks much older than the indicated age... In the area of ​​the lower third of both shoulder bones there are extensive soft scars, according to a specialist, of gunshot origin... In the upper jaw, most of the teeth are missing.” The act also noted that “communication is possible only within the framework of a conversation about her supposedly royal origin. She is completely filled with delusional thoughts about her origins from the Romanov family... This delusion cannot be corrected.”

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

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

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

Of course, it cannot be ruled out that the testimony of the Viennese tailor is just a figment of the imagination. And this is quite understandable. A murder committed under mysterious circumstances always gives rise to rumors. Especially when the victims are famous people, especially crowned persons. They presented their rights to the role of members of the royal family different people. Most of all there were false Alekseev and pseudo-Anastasy. When the remains of two people were missing from a burial near Yekaterinburg, rumors of a miraculous rescue began to spread from new strength.

But, as you know, only in 2007, half a kilometer from the main burial site, the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria were found. Experts confirmed their authenticity back in 2008, but to this day these fragments remain unburied and await their final resting place in the safe of the State Archives of Russia.

The official point of view: all members of the family of Nicholas II and himself were shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918, and no one managed to escape. And all the contenders for the role of the survivors Anastasia and Alexei are impostors.

Having canonized all members of the royal family, the Russian Orthodox Church has not yet recognized the results of the genetic examination and did not officially participate in the burial ceremony of the remains of the royal family in the tomb of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in 1998. In 2000, the murdered Romanovs were glorified as passion-bearers - martyrs for the faith. To clarify the current position of the Church, I called the Moscow Patriarchate.

We do not accuse anyone of falsification and trust scientific conclusions, if only because the Church is not a scientific research institute that can verify the results of the examination, explains Vakhtang Kipshidze, head of the analytical department of the Synodal Information Department of the Russian Orthodox Church, but our restrained position regarding the remains is connected with the fact that there was a lack of openness when collecting samples for the study. The royal family has been canonized, that is, canonized, and people want to be sure that the relics they will venerate are the remains of those same people. And we cannot afford uncertainty. Doubts are easily removed by re-examining samples taken in a more public manner.

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

Legends about the royal children miraculously escaping death are one of the most common stories among many peoples. Sometimes such legends became a convenient cover for impostors, sometimes the last hope that the dynasty was not interrupted and that the descendants of an ancient and glorious family were still alive somewhere. The circumstances of the death of the Romanovs are so complicated that the appearance of stories about children who escaped execution is not surprising. It is also not surprising that many “doubles” appeared, calling themselves direct descendants of the last Russian emperor.

In the almost hundred years that have passed since the execution of the royal family in Yekaterinburg, so many impostors have appeared that it is difficult to count them.

There are many versions about the miraculous salvation of the children of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas II - from naive folk tales that the Mother of God averted the eyes of the executioners, and angels on wings carried them to a safe place, to well-thought-out stories that amaze with the abundance of details and details. Although storytellers rarely agree on who exactly managed to survive, as well as on the circumstances of salvation.

As you know, on the night of July 16-17, 1918 in the city of Yekaterinburg, in the basement of the house of mining engineer Nikolai Ipatiev, Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, and their children - Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia - were shot , heir to the throne Tsarevich Alexei, as well as physician Botkin, valet Alexei Trupp, maid Anna Demidova and cook Ivan Kharitonov.

It is officially believed that the decision to execute the royal family was finally made by the Ural Council of Workers', Peasants' and Soldiers' Deputies 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 escape the Romanovs. 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, having been told about 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 very last moment, when the volleys rang out. It is known that after the first salvo, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia remained alive - they were saved by jewelry sewn into the corsets of their dresses. Later, witnesses interrogated by investigator Sokolov testified that of the royal daughters, Anastasia resisted death the longest; she, already wounded, “had” to be finished off with bayonets and rifle butts. According to materials discovered by historian Edward Radzinsky, Anna Demidova, Alexandra’s maid, who managed to protect herself with a pillow with jewelry sewn into it, remained alive the longest.

A murder committed under mysterious circumstances always gives rise to rumors, especially if the victims are famous people, especially royalty. Therefore, it is not surprising that the secret reprisal carried out by the Bolsheviks against the royal family gave rise to versions that the Romanovs miraculously survived. “Rumors that one of the Grand Duchesses was able to escape were extremely strong,” wrote the publicist K. Savich, who until October 1917 served as chairman of the Petrograd Jury Court. At first, when only a few knew about the events in the Ipatiev House, people simply hoped that at least one of the Romanovs had survived - and wished for reality. Then, when the remains of members of the royal family were discovered, it turned out that among the skeletons found near Yekaterinburg, there were no remains of Anastasia and Tsarevich Alexei. This gave rise to new legends about salvation. Is it any wonder that the tragic events in Yekaterinburg gave rise to a new wave of imposture, comparable to the one that swept through the first Russian Troubles.

The “Romanovs who escaped execution” and their descendants, who began to appear immediately after the execution of the royal family in 1918, became the largest category of impostors in modern history. The children of some of them today continue to seek the return of their “legitimate name” or even the Russian imperial crown. In various parts of the planet there were either Tsarevich Alexei, Princess Anastasia, Princess Maria or Nicholas II. There were the most self-proclaimed Alekseevs - 81, slightly less than the Maris - 53. There were about 33 false Anastasies, the same number of self-proclaimed Tatyanas, and the fewest among the modern false Romanovs were adventurers posing as Olga - 28.

With enviable regularity they declared themselves in Germany, France, Spain, the United States of America and Russia. So, for example, in mid-1919, a young man of 15-16 years old appeared in Siberia, looking like Tsarevich Alexei. As eyewitnesses testify, the people received him with enthusiasm. Schools even collected money in favor of the “saved heir to the throne.” A telegram about the appearance of the “prince” was immediately sent to the ruler of Siberia, Admiral A.V. Kolchak, by whose order the young man was taken to Omsk. According to the claimant, he managed to escape by jumping out of the train on which the royal family was being taken into exile and hiding with “devoted people.” However, Pierre Gillard, the former teacher of Tsarevich Alexei, who came to check the truth of his testimony, asked the impostor several questions in French. “Tsarevich Alexei” could not answer them, but stated that he perfectly understood what he was being asked about, but did not want to answer and would only talk with Admiral Kolchak. The deception of Alexey Putsyato, as the young swindler was really called, was revealed very quickly...

A few months later, the tsar’s son Alexei Romanov, who had “miraculously escaped,” showed up in Poland. Some time later, Grand Duchess Olga appeared there. She said that she lost her memory from a strong blow with a butt, which she allegedly received from executioners in Yekaterinburg, and then was saved by some soldier. In the 1920s, another enterprising person toured the south of France under the name of Olga Nikolaevna, who was busy collecting money from sentimental, gullible people for the “redemption of the imperial family’s jewelry pawned in a pawnshop.” So she managed to enrich herself by almost a million francs! Then came the turn of the “children and grandchildren of the Tsar’s children”: for example, a certain playmaker who introduced himself as “the grandson of Tsarevich Alexei” was a regular at the Madrid bullfight for many years...

At one time there was a legend in emigrant circles that in fact the tsar and his family were not shot, but were secretly kept under the vigilant supervision of the Cheka-OGPU at one of the resorts in Georgia. And Nicholas II himself allegedly lived until 1957 and was buried in Sukhumi. Despite the skepticism of wide circles of the world community towards these and similar rumors, one of the myths concerning the Romanov family has existed for many decades and even today continues to excite people’s consciousness. The story of the “miraculously saved Anastasia” in question has several interpretations. Several novels and a feature film released in the West are dedicated to the “miraculous rescue” and the further fate of Nicholas II’s daughter Anastasia, who allegedly survived the execution of the royal family in 1918. How was this myth born, and does it have any basis?

Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanova, the fourth daughter of Emperor Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna, was born on June 5 (18), 1901 in Peterhof. The full title of Anastasia Nikolaevna sounded like this: Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess of Russia Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova. However, they did not use it at court, in official speech they called her by her first name and patronymic, and at home they called her “little, Nastaska, Nastya, little egg” - for her small height (157 cm) and round figure. Princess Anastasia was only 17 years old when, along with her entire family, she was shot in the basement of the Ipatiev House. Her death was proven by eyewitnesses, including one of the main participants in the execution, Yakov Yurovsky. The remains of the princess were found in the early 1990s, identified and buried in 1998 in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. But immediately after the execution, of course, there were witnesses who said that Anastasia still managed to escape: she either ran away from Ipatiev’s house, or was replaced by one of the servants even before the revolution.

Less than two years had passed since the execution, when the first false Anastasia appeared, who managed to maintain her legend for the longest time. Her name was Anna Anderson, and later, after her husband, a professor at the University of Virginia, who decided to help her in the fight for the royal title, Anna Anderson - Manahan.

This most famous of the falsehoods, Anastasy, claimed that she owed her salvation to a soldier named Tchaikovsky, who managed to pull her out wounded from the basement of Ipatiev’s house after he saw that she was still alive. In the future, her story looked like this: together with the entire family of Alexander Tchaikovsky (mother, sister and younger brother) Anastasia came to Bucharest and remained there until 1920. She gave birth to a child from Tchaikovsky. In 1920, when Alexander Tchaikovsky was killed in a street shootout, she fled Bucharest without saying a word to anyone and reached Berlin. “I was with everyone on the night of the murder and, when the massacre began, I hid behind the back of my sister Tatyana, who was killed by a shot,” this is how A. Anderson, who was held for about a year and a half, told the Russian emigrant Baron von Kleist about herself on June 20, 1922 in a psychiatric hospital in Daldorf near Berlin under the name “Mrs. Tchaikovsky.” “I lost consciousness from several blows.” When I came to my senses, I discovered that I was in the house of some soldier who saved me... I was afraid of persecution and therefore decided not to open up to anyone..."

Another version of the same story was told by former Austrian prisoner of war Franz Svoboda at his trial, at which Anderson tried to defend her right to be called a Grand Duchess and gain access to her “father’s” hypothetical inheritance. F. 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 many clearly implausible details, for example, Svoboda spoke about violating the curfew, which was unthinkable at that moment, about posters announcing the escape of the Grand Duchess, allegedly posted throughout the city, and about general searches, which, according to Fortunately, they didn’t give anything. Thomas Hildebrand Preston, who was at that time the British Consul General in Yekaterinburg, completely rejected such fabrications.

Despite the fact that everyone who knew Grand Duchess Anastasia found absolutely nothing in common between her and “Frau Anna Anderson”, who wandered from one German clinic to another, there were influential forces that supported the claims of the impostor. It got to the point that in 1938 this lady demanded legal recognition of the “fact”: she is the daughter of the Russian emperor! (By this time, “Frau Anderson” had already moved to America, having married professor of medicine John Manahan.)

In February 1984, Anna Andersen-Manahan died in Charlottesville, Virginia. But the urn with her ashes was buried in Germany, in the family crypt of the Dukes of Leuchtenberg, close relatives of the Romanov family! Why? According to Russian historian Andrei Nizovsky, who studied the circumstances of this case, during the life of “Frau Anderson-Manahan” the family of the Dukes of Leuchtenberg was on her side. This is all the more amazing since many representatives of this German aristocratic family knew the real Anastasia well.

Officially launched in 1938, the court case on the claim of an impostor to recognize her as Grand Duchess Romanova is the longest in the history of world jurisprudence. It has not yet been resolved, despite the fact that back in 1961 the Hamburg court issued an unequivocal verdict: the plaintiff, for a number of reasons, cannot lay claim to the name and title of Grand Duchess.

The Hamburg court indicated the reasons for its decision that “Mrs. Anna Anderson” does not have the right to call herself Anastasia Nikolaevna. Firstly, she flatly refused medical and linguistic examinations, without which such identification would be impossible, and the graphological and anthropological examinations that took place gave a negative result. Secondly, the judicial assistant, who knows Russian, testified that the applicant never spoke it; finally, none of the witnesses who personally knew Anastasia saw even a remote resemblance to her in the plaintiff.

However, in the late 1970s, the case of the recognition of “Anastasia” received a new scandalous twist: a police examination in Frankfurt am Main found some similarity between the shape of the ears of “Frau Anderson-Manahan” and the real princess. In the criminal legislation of West Germany, this method of personal identification was given the same importance as in our country - fingerprints. The matter did not reach a tragicomic ending only because the applicant had by that time become completely insane.

A genetic analysis should have put an end to the protracted dispute. The preliminary conclusions of geneticists left no doubt: Anna Anderson, who for 64 years claimed that she was the daughter of Nicholas II, is none other than an impostor. However, this needed to be documented by studies of her tissues, samples of which were stored in a hospital in the American city of Charlottesville. But for unknown reasons, this was stubbornly opposed by the authoritative Association of Russian Nobles in the USA, which legally blocked any attempts to conduct such a study. Finally, a group of British scientists led by the famous criminologist Peter Gill received fragments of “Anastasia’s” intestines, removed from her during a long-standing operation in the United States. It turned out that the genetic code of this Frau is very far from the characteristics of the code of the Duke of Edinburgh Philip, the husband of Queen Elizabeth II of England, who is related by ties of kinship to the Romanov family. But it almost completely coincides with the genetic data of the living relatives of a certain Franciszka Schanskowska - a German woman of Polish origin, who in 1916 worked at an ammunition factory near Berlin and ended up in a psychiatric clinic after an accidental explosion of gunpowder charges, which resulted in insanity. So, despite the fact that Anna 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 about her belonging to the Romanov family during her lifetime.

But Anna Anderson, as already mentioned, was not the only, although the most persistent, contender for the name of the daughter of Nicholas II. The next impostor in the endless series of “saved Anastasias” was Eleonora Albertovna Kruger, whose story leads to the Bulgarian village of Gabarevo. It was there that, in the early 20s of the last century, a mysterious young woman “with an aristocratic bearing” appeared, who, upon meeting, introduced herself as Nora Kruger. A year later, she was joined by a tall, sickly-looking young man, Georgy Zhudin. There were rumors in the village that they were brother and sister and belonged to the royal family. However, neither Eleanor nor Georgy ever even tried to claim their right to the Romanov surname. This was done for them by people interested in the mystery of the royal family. In particular, the Bulgarian researcher Blagoy Emmanuilov said that he managed to find evidence that Eleanor and George are the children of the Russian emperor. “A lot of information reliably known about Anastasia’s life coincides with Nora from Gabarevo’s stories about herself,” the researcher said in one of his interviews for 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. In the early 1950s, 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 the bullets of the red cavalrymen. All three went ashore at the Turkish Tekerdag pier. 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. George's contemporaries claim that he was ill with tuberculosis and describe 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.”

Of course, most of the evidence that Blagoy Emmanuilov cites does not stand up to criticism. But the main thing is why did the brother and sister settle in a godforsaken Bulgarian village instead of turning to their relatives? Why didn't you tell them that you were still alive? After all, after fleeing Russia they had nothing to fear. In 1995, the remains of Eleanor Kruger and Georgy Zhudin were exhumed in the presence of a forensic doctor and an anthropologist. In George's coffin they found an amulet - an icon with the face of Christ - one of those with which only representatives of the upper strata of the Russian aristocracy were buried. The mystery of the mysterious couple from Gabarevo remains unsolved...

Meanwhile, Anastasia’s “miraculously escaped” continued to make themselves known in different parts of the globe. So, in 1980, a certain Alexandra Peregudova, a resident of the Volgograd region, died in the USSR. After her death, her children declared her royal origin. They claimed that before her death, their mother told them that it was not members of the royal family who were shot in the Ipatiev House, but their doubles. The substitution took place in 1917 near Perm, and the driver of the train that carried Nicholas II and his family helped the Romanovs. After the liberation, the emperor's family was divided. Anastasia moved to the Volgograd region, where she lived under the name Alexandra Peregudova until her death. No examination was carried out to determine whether Alexandra Peregudova belonged to the Romanov family.

The next contender for the role of the Tsar's daughter was a certain Anastasia Karpenko from Omsk. According to the story of the writer Vladimir Kashits, in September 1988 he received a call from a woman who identified herself as the daughter of Anastasia Romanova. She said that her mother died in Omsk in 1976 under the name of Anastasia Spiridonovna Karpenko. Before her death, she told her children about her origins. According to her, in 1920 in Primorye she was adopted by a local resident, Spiridon Miroshnichenko. Then she married a certain Fyodor Karpenko and moved to Omsk. Mrs. Karpenko described her salvation to the children as follows: “They were transporting me on a cart, and when the riders began to catch up, I jumped off and climbed up to my neck into the swamp. And they, ours, fought with sabers with those! And when everything calmed down, I got out, and we moved on again...”

Another contender for the name of the Tsar’s daughter lived in Ryazan. She called herself Elena Kharkina, did not advertise her origin, but neighbors noted that she was very similar to the youngest daughter of Nicholas II. According to their version, Elena-Anastasia managed to escape thanks to the same doubles who were allegedly shot instead of the real Romanovs. The date of death of Elena Kharkina is unknown; no examinations were carried out to confirm her relationship with the family of the last Russian emperor.

IN Sverdlovsk region in the cemetery of the village of Koshuki, an inscription is carved on the granite stone of one of the tombstones: “Here lies the maiden Anastasia Romanova.” According to the legend that exists in these places, when the Bolsheviks transported the family of the Russian emperor to Tobolsk, supposedly in this very village his youngest daughter Anastasia died, having fallen ill on the way. According to some evidence, the Romanov family actually passed through Koshuki after the abdication of the emperor.

Another self-proclaimed Anastasia, Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilieva, stood out among other applicants in that she mentioned many details that she could not read about anywhere. For example, that during the execution in the Ipatiev House all the women were sitting and the men were standing. Or that cousin Nicholas II, the British king George V received from Kolchak floor boards from the basement in which the royal family was shot. According to Nadezhda, she owes her salvation to the Austrian prisoner of war Franz Svoboda and fellow chairman of the Yekaterinburg Extraordinary Investigative Commission Valentin Sakharov. They allegedly took the girl to the apartment of Ipatiev House security guard Ivan Kleshcheev and hid her there. In the future, Anastasia had a hard time. She was hiding from anyone who could identify her. But one day, when a Red Army patrol beat her and took her to the Cheka, the doctor who treated the princess managed to identify her. True, the very next day he was informed that the patient had died, but in fact she was once again helped to escape. Anastasia's further life turned out to be even more difficult. According to the story

N.V. Ivanova-Vasilieva, she was detained in Irkutsk and, for a reason that she does not mention, was sentenced to death, later replacing the sentence with imprisonment in solitary confinement. Almost this woman’s entire life was spent in prisons, camps and exile. In 1929, in Yalta, she was summoned to the GPU and charged with impersonating the Tsar's daughter. Anastasia - by that time, using the passport Nadezhda Vladimirovna Ivanova-Vasilieva had purchased and filled out in her own hand - denied her guilt, and she was released. Later, Nadezhda Vladimirovna was diagnosed with schizophrenia and died in the Sviyazhsk psychiatric clinic. The grave of this Anastasia has been lost, so identification is no longer possible...

It would seem that the appearances of the miraculously saved Anastasia should have ended over the years, but no - in 2000 another contender for this name appeared. At that time she was almost 101 years old. Oddly enough, it was the age of this woman that made many researchers believe in her: after all, those who appeared earlier could count on power, fame, and money. But is there any point in hunting for illusory wealth at 101 years old? According to representatives of the “Interregional Public Charitable Christian Foundation of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova,” 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 their version, on the eve of the terrible night in Yekaterinburg, Anastasia was allegedly taken away from the Ipatiev House by someone Pyotr Verkhovtsev, who at one time was an employee of Stolypin and was the godfather of the Grand Duchess. After several years of wandering around Russia, they ended up in Tbilisi. Here Anastasia married citizen Bilikhodze, who was shot in 1937. True, no archival data about Bilikhodze and his marriage has been preserved.

According to representatives of the fund, they have at their disposal data from “22 examinations conducted by commission and judicial procedure in three states - Georgia, Russia and Latvia, the results of which were not refuted by any of the structures.” Based on these data, members of the Foundation stated, 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.”

The book by N.P. Bilikhodze was published: “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 perform in State Duma, despite his age. However, the “sensation” burst as suddenly as it appeared. Newspapers reported that Natalia Petrovna Bilikhodze died in December 2000 in the Central Clinical Hospital, where doctors discovered she had left-sided pneumonia and cardiac arrhythmia. At the insistence of a specially created working group under the Administration of the President of Russia, a molecular genetic study of Bilikhodze’s remains was carried out and the following conclusion was given: “The DNA profile of N.P. Bilikhodze does not coincide with the DNA profile (mitotype) Russian empress A. F. Romanova. The origin of N.P. Bilikhodze from the maternal genetic line of the English Queen Victoria the First is not confirmed. On this basis, consanguinity on the maternal side in any capacity of Bilikhodze N.P. and Alexandra Fedorovna Romanova is excluded ... "

Of no less interest is the story of another double, this time Tsarevich Alexei. In January 1949, a prisoner from one of the correctional colonies, 45-year-old Philip Grigorievich Semenov, who was in a state of acute psychosis, was brought to the Republican Psychiatric Clinic of Karelia. Doctors, who have seen a lot over the years of practice, have rarely encountered such strange patients. What was interesting was not the clinical case in itself, but Semenov’s personality. It turned out that he was a well-educated man who knew several foreign languages ​​perfectly and read a lot, especially the classics. His manners, tone, and beliefs indicated that the patient was familiar with the life of pre-revolutionary high society. One day a patient admitted that he was the son of Emperor Nicholas II. Of course, the doctors just nodded their heads - whoever crazy people seem to be. But the strange patient was too different from ordinary crazy people. Doctors Yu. Sologub and D. Kaufman spent a long time talking with the unusual patient at the clinic. As they later said, he was a highly educated man, a real “walking encyclopedia.” The patient did not force his revelations on anyone, and besides, this did not in any way affect his behavior, as is usually the case. Philip Grigorievich behaved calmly, did not strive at all costs to convince others of his belonging to the Romanov family. His story also did not look like an attempt to feign paranoia in order to stay in the hospital longer. All this baffled doctors.

Perhaps, over time, Philip Semenov would simply become a local landmark. But fate would have it that in the same hospital there would be a person who could verify the patient’s story - the Leningrad professor S.I. Gendelevich, who knew the life of the royal court to its subtleties. Interested in Semenov’s story, Gendelevich gave him a real exam. If the patient had learned the information in advance, he would still answer with some hesitation. And an experienced doctor could easily recognize a lie. However, Philip Semenov answered questions instantly, never mixed up anything or got lost. “Gradually we began to look at him with different eyes,” Delilah Kaufman recalled. - Persistent hematuria (the presence of blood or red blood cells in the urine), from which he suffered, also found an explanation. The heir had hemophilia. The patient had an old cross-shaped scar on his buttock. And finally we realized that the patient’s appearance reminded us of the famous portraits of Emperor Nicholas, only not the Second, but the First.”

What did the presumptive heir say about himself? Russian throne? According to Semenov, during the execution in Yekaterinburg, his father hugged him and pressed his face to him so that the boy would not see the guns pointed at him. He was wounded in the buttock, lost consciousness and fell into a common pile of bodies. He was saved and treated for a long time by some devoted person, perhaps a monk. A few months later, strangers came and announced that from now on he would bear the surname Irin (an abbreviation for the words “the name of the Romanovs is the name of the nation”). Then the boy was brought to Petrograd, to some mansion on Millionnaya Street, where he accidentally heard that he was going to be used as a symbol of the unification of forces hostile to the new system. He did not want such a fate for himself and therefore left these people. On Fontanka they were just enlisting in the Red Army. Having added two years, he joined the cavalry, then studied at the institute. Then everything changed. The same man who picked him up in 1918 somehow managed to find Irin and began to blackmail him. At that time, the Tsarevich managed to start a family. In an effort to confuse the blackmailer, he took the name of Philip Grigorievich Semenov, a deceased relative of his wife. But just changing the name was not enough. Semyonov decided to change his lifestyle. An economist by training, he began to travel around construction sites, not staying anywhere for long. But the scammer was on his trail again. To pay him off, Semenov had to give up government money. For this he was sentenced to 10 years in the camps. Philip Grigorievich Semenov was released from the camp in 1951, and he died in 1979 - the same year when the remains of the royal family were discovered in the Urals. His widow Ekaterina Mikhailovna was convinced that her husband was the emperor’s heir. As Semenov’s adopted son recalled, his stepfather loved to wander around the city; he could spend hours in the Winter Palace; he preferred antiques. He spoke reluctantly about his secret, only with his closest people. He had no abnormalities, and after the camp he never went to a psychiatric hospital. And note that this seemingly a common person fluent in German, French, English and Italian languages, wrote in ancient Greek. Philip Semyonov has long been dead, but his secret remains. Was he a mentally ill person or was he still the heir to the royal throne, the only son of Nicholas II?

There is no answer to this question, but the story of the mysterious patient of the Karelian clinic had a continuation. The English newspaper "Daily Express", becoming interested in F. Semenov, found his son Yuri and asked him to donate blood for genetic examination. It was carried out at the Aldermasten laboratory (England) by genetic research specialist Dr. Peter Gil. The DNA of the “grandson” of Nicholas II, Yuri Filippovich Semenov, and the English Prince Philip, a relative of the Romanovs through the English Queen Victoria, were compared. A total of three tests were carried out. Two of them coincided, and the third turned out to be neutral. Of course, this cannot be considered 100% proof that Yuri’s father was indeed Tsarevich Alexei, but the likelihood of this is quite high...

In conclusion, it is worth noting that none of the “doubles” of the imperial children had a happy fate. At best, they lived out their lives peacefully. Perhaps the evil fate of the Romanov family cast its ominous shadow on those who sought to prove their involvement in the famous family...

V. M. Sklyarenko, I. A. Rudycheva, V. V. Syadro. 50 famous mysteries of the history of the 20th century

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 Geneva Bank to “identify” them, an exam which none of the former candidates could pass.

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