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Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia

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Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, 1910

Her Imperial Highness Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova, in Russian: Великая Княжна Анастасия Николаевна Романова, Velikaya Knyazhna Anastasiya Nikolaevna Romanova) (June 18 [O.S. June 5] 1901 – July 17, 1918?), sometimes nicknamed Nastya, Nastas, or Nastenka, was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia and Empress Alexandra, the last autocratic rulers of Imperial Russia.

She was a younger sister of Grand Duchess Olga, Grand Duchess Tatiana and Grand Duchess Maria, and was an elder sister of Alexei Nikolaevitch, Tsarevitch of Russia.

Since her assumed death in 1918, several women have claimed to be her, the most famous being Anna Anderson and Eugenia Smith.

Life and Death

She shared her name with Tsaritsa Anastasia of Russia, a 16th century Russian aristocrat whose marriage to the first Tsar, Ivan the Terrible, provided the Romanov family with their claim to the throne. She and her older sister Maria were known within the family as "The Little Pair" and shared a room, much like their two older sisters. All four affectionately went by the group name, OTMA.

A tomboy and intelligent, she was reportedly comically good at wicked impersonations of those around her, and possessed a sharp wit and appreciation for sarcastic jokes. While often described as gifted and bright, she was never interested in the restrictions of school. She loved animals and always had her two dogs, Shvybzik and Jemmy, at her side. She spent her free time playing her record player, writing letters, watching movies, taking pictures (a family hobby), playing the balalaika with her brother Alexei and lying in the sun doing nothing. She also suffered from stomach ailments much like her mother, the Empress, and the painful medical condition hallux valgus (bunions), which affected the joints of both her big toes.

In February 1917, she and her family were placed under house arrest at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoe Selo during the Russian Revolution. As the Bolsheviks approached, Alexander Kerensky of the Provisional Government had them moved to Tobolsk, Siberia. Shortly after the Bolshvik's seized majority control of Russia, she and her family were moved to Yekaterinburg where they are presumed to have been executed by firing squad in the early morning of July 17, 1918. While some witnesses later said they saw her, her mother Alexandra Fyodorovna and sisters in Perm after the execution, it is widely discredited as nothing more than a fanciful and highly dramatic rumor.

From Mystery to Legend

After Tsar Nicholas II abdicated the throne in 1917, Russia quickly disintegrated into civil war and Anastasia and her family were placed under house arrest in the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoe Selo. They were soon transferred to the city of Tobolsk in Siberia and from there they, and a few servants, were moved to the mining town of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. Negotiations for their release between their Bolshevik (commonly referred to as 'Reds') captors and their extended family, many of whom were prominent members of the Royal Houses of Europe, stalled. As the White Army (referred to as 'Whites'), loyalists still faithful to the Tsar and the principles of autocracy, advanced toward Yekaterinburg the Reds were in a precarious situation. The Reds knew Yekaterinburg would fall to the better manned and equipped White Army. Did they run the risk of having the Imperial Family liberated by the Whites, thus providing these loyalists with a 'rallying cry' that might renew their vigor to reinstate autocracy to Russia? Or did they do away with the Imperial Family in order to preserve their new and fragile hold on Russia?

History has always assumed that Anastasia was murdered along with her father and the rest of her family during the early morning hours of July 17, 1918 in a sub-basement room in the Ipatiev House (also ominously referred to as 'The House of Special Purpose'), where they were being sequestered during their imprisonment in Yekaterinburg. The extra-judicial execution was carried out by forces of the Bolshevik secret police under the command of Yakov Yurovsky. According to the infamous "Yurovsky Note," an account of the event filed by Yurovsky to his Bolshevik superiors, just before dawn on the day of the murders the family was woken and told to dress. When they asked why they were informed that they were being moved to a new location to ensure their safety in anticipation of the violence that might probably ensue when the White Army reached Yekaterinburg. Once dressed, the family and the small circle of servants and caregivers that had remained with them were herded into a small room in the house's sub-basement and told to wait. Alexandra and Alexi were allowed to sit in chairs provided by guards at the request of the Tsarina. After several minutes, the executioners entered the room, led by Yurovsky. With no hesitation, Yurovsky quickly informed the Tsar and his family that they were all to be executed. The Tsar had time to say only "What?" and turn to his family before he was asassinated with a bullet to the head. The Tsarina, who quickly made the sign of the cross before her, and the rest of her family and retinue were killed in short order. Horrifically, the "Yurovsky Note" futher reported that once the thick smoke that had filled the room from so many weapons being fired in such close proximity cleared, it was discoverd that the executioners' bullets had ricocheted off the corsets of two of the Grand Duchesses. The executioners later came to find out that this was because the family's crowned jewels and diamonds had been sewn inside the linings of the corsets to hide them from their captors. The corsets thus served as a form of macabre "armor" against the bullets, and only prolonged the unimaginable panic that must have been experienced by these two young women before the executioners were forced to dispatch them by stabbing them with the bayonets on the ends of their rifles. According to most accounts, Anastasia was one of the surviving Grand Duchesses. The legend of Anastasia's possible survival and escape begins here. Feigning death, amongst the bodies of her family members and servants, it was claimed by nearly every Anastasia pretender that it was with the help of a compassionate guard who rescued her from amongst the corpses after noticing that she was still alive that she was able to make her escape. These rumors were fueled by later reports of trains and houses being searched for 'Anastasia Romanov' by Bolshevik soldiers and secret police. Strangely, there were also reports of a woman who claimed to be a daughter of the Tsar found pleading for help in the small villages around Yekaterinburg. She is said to have claimed that she had been in the hands of guards who had rescued her after the massacre, but who also had beat and raped her. Shortly afterward, she is said to have disappeared.

In 1991, bodies believed to be those of the Imperial Family and their servants were finally exhumed from a mass grave that had been found in the woods outside Yekaterinburg nearly a decade before - a grave kept hidden by its discoverers from the Bolsheviks who still ruled Russia when the grave was originally found. Once opened, it was discovered that instead of eleven sets of remains (the Tsar, Nicholas II, the Tsarina, Alexandra, the Tsarevitch, Alexi, the four Grand Duchesses, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, the family's doctor, Eugene Botkin, their valet, Alexi Trupp, their cook, Ivan Kharinotov and a lady-in-waiting to the Tsarina, Anna Demidova) the grave held only nine. Alexei and, according to the late forensic expert Dr. William Maples, Anastasia were missing from the family's mass grave. Russian scientists contested this however, claiming that Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna of Russia was missing from the grave. In 1998, when the bodies of the Imperial Family were interred, a body measuring 5'7 inches was buried under the name of Anastasia, despite the fact that Anastasia was the shortest of the Grand Duchesses. Some historians believe the account of the "Yurovsky Note" that two of the bodies were removed from the main grave and burned at an undisclosed location to create suspision that these were the remains of the Tsar and his retinue should they be discovered, as the body count would not be correct. However, some forensic experts believe the complete burning of two bodies in that short amount of time would have been impossible. In 2000, the family was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

Anastasia's possible survival was one of the celebrated mysteries of the 20th century. In 1922, as rumors spread that one of the grand duchesses had survived, a woman who later called herself Anna Anderson appeared and claimed to be Anastasia. She created a life-long controversy and made headlines for decades, with some surviving relatives believing she was Anastasia and others not. Her battle for recognition continues to be the longest running case that was ever heard by the German courts, where the case was officially filed. The final decision of the court was that while it could not prove that Anderson was in fact Anastasia, it could also not prove that she wasn't. Anderson died in 1984 and her body was cremated. After DNA testing was conducted on a tissue sample of Anderson's, and compared with that of a decendent of the Tsarina Alexandra, the testing demonstrated that Anna was not, in fact, Anastasia but instead was likely to be Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker who had disappeared at around the same time that Anderson appeared in Germany. However, some people question the validity of samples tested for DNA. Another claimant, Eugenia Smith appeared in 1963, at the height of the 'Anastasia/Anna Anderson' controversy, but her story too had inconsistencies and she refused extensive testing.

Influence on Culture

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Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanova

The possible survival of Anastasia has been the subject of both theatrical and made-for-television films. The earliest, made in 1928, was called Clothes Make the Woman. The story followed a woman who turns up to play the part of a rescued Anastasia for a Hollywood film, and ends up being recognized by the Russian soldier who originally rescued her from her would-be assassins.

The most famous is probably the highly fictionalized 1956 Anastasia starring Ingrid Bergman as Anna Anderson, Yul Brynner as General Bounine (a fictional character based on several actual men), and Helen Hayes as the Dowager Empress Marie, Anastasia's paternal grandmother. The film tells the story of a woman from an asylum who appears in Paris in 1928 and is captured by several Russian emigrés who feed her information so that they can fool Anastasia's grandmother into thinking Anderson actually is her grandaughter in order to obtain a Tsarist fortune. As time goes by they begin to suspect that this "Madame A. Anderson" really is the murdered Grand Duchess.

In 1986, NBC broadcast a mini-series loosely based on a book published in 1983 by Peter Kurth called Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson. The movie, Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna was a two-part series which began with the young Anastasia Nicholaevna and her family being sent to Yekaterinburg, where they are executed by Bolshevik soldiers. The story then moves to 1923, and while taking great liberties, ficticiously follows the claims of the woman known as Anna Anderson. Amy Irving portrays the adult Anna Anderson. The movie also starred many veteran movie and TV actors, most noteably, Omar Sharif as Tsar Nicholas II.

The most recent film is 1997's Anastasia, a musical version of the story of Anastasia's escape from Russia and her subsequent quest for recognition that took even greater liberties with historical fact than the 1956 film of the same name. In this account, a young Anastasia, along with her grandmother, tries to escape a frenzied revolutionary mob and a devilish Grigori Rasputin, who has started the Russian Revolution with a powerful and evil spell. They both exit through a secret door in a palace wall and race to a train station, mobbed with autocrats and the socially elite who are trying to flee the Bolshevik forces that have taken control of Moscow. Separated from her grandmother by the jostling mob, Anastasia rushes to catch-up with her, but is knocked to the ground where she hits her head. She loses her memory and ends up in an orphanage. She is released once she reaches legal age and meets up with two money-hungry Russians who attempt to teach her to be Anastasia. One of them, Dimitri, finally realizes she really is the real Anastasia. He eventually falls in love with her and the two run away together.

Anastasia's survival is also the subject of the song "Yes Anastasia" by contemporary musician Tori Amos. The band Innocence Mission also sings of the Anastasia/Anna Anderson legend in their song "I Remember Me." Anastasia is mentioned in the 1968 Rolling Stones song "Sympathy for the Devil" in the line "Anastasia screamed in vain."

Anastasia appears as a playable character in the 2004 PlayStation 2 Console role-playing game Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

Older namesake

Another Grand Duchess Anastasia of Russia (Великая Княжна Анастасия Михайловна) (July 28, 1860 - March 11, 1922) was the daughter of Grand Duke Mikhail of Russia. She was married to Grand Duke Friedrich of Mecklenburg-Schwerin.

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