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Anastasia Romanov survived Bolshevik shooting? The true story of the Grand Duchess of Russia

Anastasia Romanov it was one of the daughters of Nicola II, Last tsar of Russia dirty in 1917. Anastasia grew with all the privileges guaranteed by his condition, but after the Russian revolutionlike the rest of his family, was placed on arrests by order of the provisional government. In 1918 the Bolshevik government, which had overturned the provisional government with the October Revolution and was fighting one civil war Against the counter -revolutionary armies who wanted the return of the Tsar, he decided to execute Nicola II and his family members. The sentence was performed, but shortly afterwards the legend that Anastasia had escaped the execution spread. Several women, including the Polish Anna Andersonclaimed to be the daughter of the Tsar. The hypothesis raised debates until the 90s, when science, thanks to the DNA examination, definitively clarified that Anastasia was shot together with its family members in 1918.

Who was Anastasia Romanov

Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova She was the fourth daughter of the last Tsar of Russia, Nicola II Romanov, and his wife Alexandra Fedorovna. Anastasia He was born in 1901 In the luxurious Palazzo di Peterhof, on the Gulf of Finland. His parents remained disappointed because they wanted a male son (who would be born in 1904, Prince Aleksei), since they already had the daughters Olga, Tatiana and Marja. Anastasia grew up in luxury and agi, studied at home with private precedents and, like the sisters, brought the Title of Granduchess.

Anastasia in 1910
Anastasia Romanov in 1910.

As a child he came into contact with a sinister character, the mystical Grigorij Rasputinwhich was very tied to the Tsarina Alexandra. In Petersburg, the capital of the Tsarist Empire, it was rumored that Rasputin had a relationship with the Tsarina or his daughters, including Anastasia, but the accusations were never tried. The Tsarist regime, as we know, was reversed by the February 1917 Revolutionfollowing which power was taken by a provisional government and the Tsar and his family were placed under house arrest in their residences. In October, a new revolution brought the Bolsheviks to power, led by Leninwho continued to keep the imperial family in arrest. In 1918 they moved it, in two phases, to a palace in the city of Ekaterinburgin the area of ​​the Ural Mountains. Anastasia, like the other family members, tried to subtract from the government of jewelry, cooking them in the clothes.

Anastasia in 1914
Anastasia Romanov in 1914.

After the Bolshevik revolution, one began in Russia civil war Among the red army, which defended the government, and the white armies who wanted to restore the power of the tsar. In the summer of 1918, for the fear that Nicola II and his family members could put himself at the head of the counter -revolutionary armies, now at the gates of Ekaterinburg, the Bolshevik government decided to put them to death. Overall, about twenty people were killed: Nicola ithe Tsarina Alexandra he is 5 children they were rifle in the night of the July 16, 1918 in the residence where they stayed. Material executors of the death sentence were some Russian agents and some Hungarian soldiers (prisoners of war united to the red army), commanded by the commissioner Jakov Jurovskyan officer of the CEKAthe Bolshevik secret police. After the execution, Jurovsky and his men brought the corpses to a nearby forest. Along the way two, those of Aleksei and Marja burned. Later they placed the other bodies in a quarry, including anastasia, and there burned.

The iPatiev house, where Nicola II and his family were held
The iPatiev house, where Nicola II and his family were held

The legend of survival

In the 1920s, the legend that Anastasia had survived, because she had managed to be believed dead by the soldiers who had made the shooting. Legend was supported by one Polish woman patient, Anna Anderson. Hospitalized in February 1920 in a psychiatric hospital in Berlin following an attempt at suicide, during the hospitalization he declared that he was Anastasia Romanov. Since then he always supported this thesis, causing discussions between those who considered his history true and those who considered it a falsification. In 1968 yes He moved to the United States With the name of Alessia Romanov, but in 1983 he was locked up in the asylum again and the following year he died, without ever having denied being the daughter of the last Tsar.

Anna Anderson
Anna Anderson.

In addition to Anna Anderson, also other women, lesser known, have claimed to be Anastasia Romanov. The American is among them Eugenia Smithborn in Chicago in 1899, which even wrote an autobiography, The Grand Duchess Anastasija Nikolaevna Romanovato support his thesis. Eugenia Smith, however, has always rejected, however, of submitting to the DNA test.

Eugenia Smith
Eugenia Smith.

The responses of science: Anastasia died in 1918

Today we know with certainty Anastasia Romanov was shot together with his family in Ekaterinburg In 1918. In 1991, after the collapse of the Soviet Union, in a forest near Ekaterinburg they were the remains of the Tsarof his wife and three of the children, including Anastasia. The analysis of the mitochondrial DNA confirmed that the bodies were those of Nicola II and its family members. Furthermore, in August 1994 the DNA of Anna Andersontaken from a tissue removed in 1979, with that of the Russian imperial family, and was established beyond any reasonable doubt that the woman was not one of the daughters of the Tsar. The last test emerged in 2007, when the remains of the other two children of Nicola II were exhumed, Marja and Alekseiburied in the woods at Ekaterinburg, and it was possible to definitively exclude the hypothesis that a member of the Romanov family had escaped the execution.