Did Anastasia survive the massacre of the Romanovs? The real history that debunks the conspiracy (2024)

In 1917, revolution erupted in Russia and Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate, bringing an end to more than 300 years of Romanov rule. Over the next 16 months, he, his wife Alexandra, their son Alexei and four daughters Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia were under house arrest in a number of places – as a second revolution and civil war broke out in the country – eventually ending up in Bolshevik captivity in Ekaterinburg. While there, the decision was taken by Lenin in Moscow that they should be murdered, and so removing any threat to the revolution.

Advertisement

In the early hours of 17 July 1918, the Romanov family, along with their doctor and three servants, were awoken and taken down to the basement on the pretext that the house may soon be attacked by anti-Bolshevik forces. Instead, a group of guards who had been given handguns entered the room and murdered everyone. Those who survived the initial frenzy of gunfire were finished off with bayonets, before the killers took the bodies on a truck to the Koptyaki forest outside Ekaterinburg and disposed of them in a mass grave.

  • On the podcast | Helen Rappaport considers the theory of the missing grand duchess Anastasia

The conspiracy theory: Anastasia’s survival

Several theories have it that somehow, the youngest daughter, Grand Duchess Anastasia, survived the massacre and was able to flee Russia, possibly with the help of a sympathetic Bolshevik soldier. According to the most famous version of this theory, she then lived the rest of her life in the United States.

Although most focused on Anastasia, there were claims throughout the 20th century that other Romanov children had escaped, or that the family had been spirited away from Russia before the killings were even said to have taken place.

Conspiracy: A HistoryExtra podcast series

Member exclusive | Was the moon landing faked? Did Shakespeare actually write his plays? Were the pyramids built by aliens? Expert historians offer their perspectives on history's biggest conspiracy theories.

Listen to all episodes now

What is the source of the theory?

In the immediate aftermath, chaos and confusion reigned as the Bolsheviks, who were still fighting a civil war and deliberately spreading misinformation, announced the death of only Nicholas II. Rumours began to spread about the fate of his family. Then, in 1920, the first person claiming to be one of the Romanovs came forward.

More like this

“In Berlin, a young woman named Anna Anderson was found having attempted, supposedly, to commit suicide by drowning herself in the canal. She was hauled out of the water and while recovering in hospital began claiming that she was Grand Duchess Anastasia,” says Dr Helen Rappaport, historian and author on Russian history. “From there, the thing snowballed. It was the beginning of a long and persistent legend that really wasn’t closed until the 1990s.”

  • Read more | The last days of the Romanovs: could George V have saved the family?

Over the decades, dozens of people claimed to be Anastasia, one of her siblings, or even her son or grandchild. Anderson remained the most famous, however. “She kept up a clever pretence, despite many things about her that didn’t ring true. She failed, however, to con anyone in the immediate Imperial Family, such as the Dowager Empress Maria Feodorovna, Grand Duchess Olga [sister of Nicholas], and people like Sir Thomas Preston, former British consul in Ekaterinburg, and Pierre Gilliard [the children’s tutor],” stresses Dr Rappaport.

Still, Anderson – whom identification by family members and later DNA testing showed to actually be a Polish woman named Franziska Schanzkowska with a history of mental illness – did gather supporters, mainly in German, and, says Rappaport, “dined out on her claims for years and even started this torturous legal claim to have her identity authenticated and thus gain access to all the Romanov money, said to have been salted away in bank accounts across Europe.”

The reasons why the theory endures

The lack of clarity from the Bolsheviks provided enough hope that the Romanov girls, aged between 17 and 22, had survived the brutal slaughter. While it seemed highly unlikely that Alexei, son and heir to the tsar, would have been spared, there was never an open admission to the killing of the children, and when accounts of what happened that night did start to appear they were full of contradictions and gaps.

“The documentary evidence was hidden away for a long time under the Soviet regime,” says Dr Rappaport. “Any discussion of the Romanovs was verboten; you couldn’t talk about them. Certainly under Josef Stalin, there was a complete clampdown.”

In those gaps, the theories proliferated – and were bolstered by each new impostor coming forward. Books and movies perpetuated the idea that Anastasia had survived, most notably the 1956 Hollywood hit, Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman.

“Ultimately, the real reason people would not accept that all the Romanovs had been killed was because two of the bodies were missing for a long time,” states Dr Rappaport. “The grave was found in secret in the 1970s and properly exhumed after the collapse of communism in 1991, but two bodies could not be accounted for. Russian anthropologists and excavators said it was Maria and Alexei who were missing. Other people, particularly some American experts, claimed it was Anastasia and Alexei. That continued to assist the myth.”

The evidence that debunks the conspiracy

In the years afterwards, several of the killers did speak about their experiences, including the chief executioner, Yakov Yurovsky. As late as the 1960s, a couple even proudly gave interviews about their part that night in 1918.

The conclusive evidence, however, came with the discovery of the two missing bodies, who had been separated from the others. “I was actually in Ekaterinburg in the summer of 2007 when they found the two missing children,” says Dr Rappaport. “What they found was pitiful, charred and fragmented remains, but enough to do DNA tests.”

  • Read more | The legacy of the Romanovs: how is the last Russian royal family remembered in Russia?

In order to confirm the identities of the remains of those reburied in 1998, scientists had taken blood samples from Prince Philip, consort of Queen Elizabeth II and grand-nephew of tsarina Alexandra. After the 2007 discovery of the missing remains “A learned paper came out around that time, a collaboration between Russian forensic scientists and a team from the US led by Dr Mike Coble, which proved that all the DNA samples matched. All the Romanovs had died.”

Yet still, the conspiracy theory remains. Dr Rappaport suggests that part of the problem is the role of the Russian Orthodox Church, which to this day has not officially verified that any of the remains discovered both in 1991 and 2007 are members of the Romanov Imperial Family. “Not only that, it hasn’t sanctioned those remains being buried. There is this awful, lingering limbo in which the remains of the family are probably sitting in cold storage somewhere, waiting to be reunited and reburied together.”

Advertisement

Dr Helen Rappaport is a specialist in Victorian and late Russian imperial history. Her books include Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses (Pan, 2014)

Did Anastasia survive the massacre of the Romanovs? The real history that debunks the conspiracy (2024)

FAQs

Did Anastasia survive the massacre of the Romanovs? The real history that debunks the conspiracy? ›

These remains were put to rest at Peter and Paul Fortress in 1998. The bodies of Alexei and the remaining daughter—either Anastasia or her older sister Maria—were discovered in 2007. Her purported survival has been conclusively disproven.

Did the real Anastasia survive? ›

No. Numerous women—most famously Anna Anderson—claimed to be Anastasia and thus heir to the Romanov fortune. Each said she had survived the execution and escaped. However, DNA tests on Anastasia's remains conducted after the collapse of the Soviet Union confirmed that she had died with the rest of her family.

Did anyone from the Romanov family survive? ›

Of the House of Romanov's 65 members, 47 survivors went into exile abroad. In 1924, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich, the senior surviving male-line descendant of Alexander II of Russia by primogeniture, claimed the headship of the defunct Imperial House of Russia.

Is the story of Anastasia true? ›

The 1956 film is based on the true story of Anna Anderson, who was pulled from the Landwehr Canal in Berlin in 1920 and later claimed to be Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia.

What actually happened to Anna Anderson? ›

After a 13-state police alarm, they were found and Anderson was returned to a care facility. In January she was thought to have had a stroke, and on 12 February 1984, she died of pneumonia. She was cremated the same day, and her ashes were buried in the churchyard at Castle Seeon on 18 June 1984.

How many Romanovs are alive today? ›

There are no immediate family members of the former Russian Royal Family alive today. However, there are still living descendants of the Romanov family. Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh and husband of Queen Elizabeth II is the grandnephew of Tsarina Alexandra.

Were the Romanovs good or bad? ›

However, it does not negate the fact that the Romanovs were incompetent rulers of Russia. The fact is that the Romanovs fell from grace on their own accord. There were other factors, but it was the Romanovs who played the biggest role in sealing their fate.

Was the mystery of Anastasia solved? ›

In 2007 the two missing bodies were found, and soon afterward they were identified as Alexis and probably Maria. Anastasia's remains were likely one of the bodies that had been found earlier.

Is Queen Elizabeth related to the Romanovs? ›

Queen Elizabeth II is related to the Romanovs through her paternal side; as mentioned, her grandfather King George V was Czar Nicholas II's cousin. Per The Express, Nicholas II's mother, Marie, was the sister of King Edward VII's wife, Queen Alexandra. And King Edward VII's mother was Queen Victoria.

How old would Anastasia Romanov be today? ›

HIH Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicolievna (1901- 1918) would be 120 years old this year, there is no possibility she could be found alive. In addition, her remains were found outside Ekaterinburg in 1991 proving her murder in 1918.

Why were the Romanovs killed? ›

Some Western historians attribute the execution order to the government in Moscow, specifically Vladimir Lenin and Yakov Sverdlov, who wanted to prevent the rescue of the imperial family by the approaching Czechoslovak Legion during the ongoing Russian Civil War. This is supported by a passage in Leon Trotsky's diary.

What was the crime of Anastasia? ›

Anastasia was charged in three murders – in 1928, 1932 and 1933 – but in each case, witnesses either disappeared or refused to testify. Two other high-level Mob informants, both under police custody, died before their testimony helped bring Anastasia to trial, in 1941 and 1942.

What did Rasputin do to Anastasia? ›

As she makes her way to a nearby bridge, Rasputin emerges from the fog, and attempts to kill her. However, Dimitri (having had second thoughts) returns to try and save Anastasia. In the process, Anastasia manages to get hold of Rasputin's reliquary, and destroy it, causing the 'mad monk' to finally be destroyed.

Why was it believed that Anastasia was alive? ›

Books and movies perpetuated the idea that Anastasia had survived, most notably the 1956 Hollywood hit, Anastasia, starring Ingrid Bergman. “Ultimately, the real reason people would not accept that all the Romanovs had been killed was because two of the bodies were missing for a long time,” states Dr Rappaport.

Which Romanov child survived? ›

Finally in 1922 she revealed that she was in truth the Grand Duchess Anastasia Romanov and that in July, 1918 she alone, through a series of extraordinary events and circumstances, had survived the brutal murder of her father, Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, her mother, the Tsarina Alexandra, her three older sisters and ...

What languages did Anastasia Romanov speak? ›

What happened to the original Anastasia? ›

Her purported survival has been conclusively disproven. Scientific analysis including DNA testing confirmed that the remains are those of the imperial family, showing that all four grand duchesses were killed in 1918. Several women falsely claimed to have been Anastasia; the best known impostor was Anna Anderson.

Did the Romanov sisters suffer? ›

The four Romanov sisters of Russia suffered terribly at their death in the tiny basement of Ipatiev House, Yekaterinburg, Siberia, Russia. It is often called an “execution”, but none of the family, not even the incompetent Tsar Nicholas, deserved to meet such a horrible fate.

What happened at the end of Anastasia? ›

Anya discovers Dmitry at Pont Alexandre III, where they embrace. The couple leaves Paris as the spirits of the Romanovs celebrate the life that Anya and Dmitry will have together (“Finale”).

References

Top Articles
Latest Posts
Recommended Articles
Article information

Author: Zonia Mosciski DO

Last Updated:

Views: 6487

Rating: 4 / 5 (51 voted)

Reviews: 82% of readers found this page helpful

Author information

Name: Zonia Mosciski DO

Birthday: 1996-05-16

Address: Suite 228 919 Deana Ford, Lake Meridithberg, NE 60017-4257

Phone: +2613987384138

Job: Chief Retail Officer

Hobby: Tai chi, Dowsing, Poi, Letterboxing, Watching movies, Video gaming, Singing

Introduction: My name is Zonia Mosciski DO, I am a enchanting, joyous, lovely, successful, hilarious, tender, outstanding person who loves writing and wants to share my knowledge and understanding with you.