The
Russian Revolution and the circumstances surrounding the
murder of the family of Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia and the purported
escape and survival of one of his daughters,
Grand Duchess Anastasia, from his
executioners made the story of the royal family and of Anastasia as one of the
most celebrated and the most talked about in the 20
th century.
The royal family
Emperor Nicholas II and his German-born wife, Grand Duchess
Alexandra, had five children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei. The
royal couple as well as their daughters doted for Alexei being the youngest of
their children, the only son and the heir to the Russian throne. Unfortunately,
the boy suffered from inherited disease,
hemophilia, from his mother. The
disease made the boy’s health delicate and for it he nearly died several times.
Nicholas II and the
Russian Empire
The ascendants of Nicholas II led a Slavic tribe to carve an
empire or the nation of Russia that stretches from Europe to Asia. The Russians
were converted to Christianity from Byzantium or
Constantinople. The rulers
thought of Russia as the third Rome after Christendom’s second most important
city, Constantinople, fell to the Ottoman Turks in 1453. Being one of the powers
of Europe, Russia was a logical successor to Constantinople as the center of
Christian Orthodoxy. The word “Czar” was
derived from the word “Caesar”, the title of ancient Roman emperor.
Despite territorial expansions and conquest made by the
previous czars, they were unable to arrest the social problems that persisted
in the empire. Nicholas II, although well intentioned, was a weak leader, was slow
to adapt to the changing social needs of the times and was firm believer of
absolute autocratic power. These attributes turned out to be his undoing.
The disastrous war with
Japan and the 1905 revolution
In 1905 Russia suffered defeat to Japan at Manchuria which
demoralized the Russian army. The national humiliation was aggravated by social
unrests at home. A demonstration led by Georgy Apollonovich Gapon, a subversive
priest, was fired upon by imperial troops at Winters Palace on January 22, 1905
causing hundreds of death. Disorders followed. There were nationwide strikes organized
by the soviets or workers’ council in the industrial sections of Russia. They
were accompanied by uprisings of nationalists, peasants and other groups. Nicholas
II was forced to grant civil rights and set up a Duma or parliament to adopt
reform measures. The troops were able to quell the rebellion and the government
was back in control in 1906.
Despite the grave problems faced by his government, the czar
was ever highly devoted to his wife and his family. The couple did their most
to attend to Alexei’s well-being. An uneducated monk from Siberia named Grigory
Yefimovich Rasputin who was reported to have healing power was called to the
imperial palace. Convinced that Rasputin could relieve the sufferings of their
only son, the royal couple made him as one of their retinues.
Rasputin’s likability to the royal children and his knack to
be in good graces to the queen made him an influential person in the empire. It was reported that the emperor was dominated
by his wife and she influenced him in his decisions. Through his connection
with the empress, Rasputin was able to place incompetent persons in high
positions of the government. And the public suspected him as an influencing
factor in the policy and decision making of the government. The presence of
Rasputin in the palace only worsened the image of the royal couple to the
public, and Rasputin too became a distrusted and hated figure in Russia.
The outbreak of WW1
and Rasputin’s assassination
The assassination of
Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand of Austria on June 28, 1914 at Sarajevo signaled a
horrific global conflict that was to come. As a result of it Austria with the
blessing of Germany invaded Serbia. Russia’s refusal to stand aside precipitated
the First World War.
As the czar led his troops in the war, Rasputin, the
influential figure in the imperial palace, was a subject of unsavory rumors and
suspicion by the public. He was believed to be interfering in the affairs of
the military through his connection with the empress and that he was siding
with the Germans. Worst of all, there were rumors circulating that he had an
affair with the Empress Alexandra and he seduced the grand duchesses too and
raped their maid. Rasputin did not only make the royal couple more unpopular,
he also scandalized the Russian aristocracy. The aristocrats plotted against
him. They invited him on December 30, 1916 for a midnight tea party where he
was assassinated.
The February 1917
Revolution and the abdication of the emperor
Meanwhile in the battle front, the troops led by the emperor
suffered several reverses. Lack of supplies, transport and inefficiency of the
officers demoralized troops. The number of desertion increased and the war became
unpopular at home aggravated the emperor’s problem.
Strikes and food shortages provoked a riot on February 1917.
The troops were ordered to shot at the demonstrators, but they refused and
joined the protesters instead. The Duma or the legislative assembly was
convened to enact reform measures. However, the tide of the revolution cannot
be stopped. With the anarchy, the czar could not anymore contain the situation
and he abdicated on March 17, 1917. A provisional government under Alexander
Kerensky was set up, and the Czar and his family were placed under house arrest
at Alexander’s Palace in Tsarkoye Selo.
The October 1917
Revolution and the victory of the communists
On October 1917, the Bolsheviks which espoused a novel
social and economic theory called Marxism and led by Vladimir Lenin staged an
armed coup, seized Moscow and overthrew the provisional government and its members
were arrested. As a result, the czar and his family fell to the custody of the
communists. Lenin then abolished the national assembly and replaced it with a
people’s commissar. He also set up the Cheka or secret police. However, forces
called “whites” emerged to challenge the communists.
The “whites” were broad coalition of forces which included
loyalists of the czar, the Menshiviks, landlords, capitalists and other groups
that were opposed to the communists. They had also the backings of countries
such as the United States, Japan, Great Britain and France. The communists or
“reds” overpowered the “whites”. When
they were in power, they set up a new Soviet constitution that made Vladimir
Lenin and the Communists Party all powerful in Russia.
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| Alexei |
The murder of the emperor's family by the communists
On the evening of July 16, 1918, as the “whites” were
marching toward St. Petersburg, the Czar and his family and their retinues were
woke up by their guards. They were then herded to a room. The head of the
guards then announced to the emperor that they were to be executed and the
guards started firing. The haze of the room made the executioners get out of
the room until it vanished. Shortly thereafter, they reentered the room and
finished off their victims with stabs and gun shots. The guards later brought
the bodies outside. Two of the girls showed sign of life. One was screaming
while the other who bled from her mouth was moaning slightly. The guards
finished them off with a club on their heads. The victims were buried in a mass
grave. And later two of the bodies were moved to another location to confuse
those who wanted to look for the remains of the royal family.
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| Anastasia |
Anastasia’s impostors
The effort of the communists to hide its brutal murder of
the emperor’s family which included his innocent children from the outside
world fuelled much speculations on the manner on which they were killed. There
were stories that some of the children were able to survive the execution. A story had it that a sympathetic guard was
able to bring Anastasia and Alexei to safety or that Anastasia was able to
escape abroad and assumed another name to hide her identity. Several persons
came out to claim that they were the surviving members of Russia’s last royal
family, but they all turned out to be impostors.
The most known impostor was one named Ana Anderson who
surfaced in 1920. She claimed to be the lost Anastasia and even filed her claim
at the German Court. The case was pending there for 40 years, but she was not
given award for Royal heir because she failed to prove that she indeed was Anastasia,
the “lost” princess.
The discovery and
identification of the missing remains of the last emperor’s family
Sometime in 1976 in
Yekaterinburg, several remains that were
believed to belong to the Royal family were secretly discovered. But the
information was kept from the communist authorities. After the collapse of the
Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (USSR) in 1991, DNA tests were made. Samples
taken from the remains matched that of the British Royal Family on which the
Czar’s family had blood relation. The results confirmed the identity of some of
the remains, but two were yet to be accounted for- that of Alexei and of Maria
or Anastasia. In August 23, 2007 two charred skeletons of a boy and a girl were
found at a bonfire not far from the mass grave at Yakaterinburg where the first
batch of remains was found. Through DNA testing, the remains of the boy was
positively identified as that of Alexei, while the other could be that of Maria
or Anastasia. Although the remains of Maria or Anastasia could not be specifically
identified by DNA testing alone, the scientists concluded that all of the remains
of the family of the czar were accounted for, and that there was no one who
survived the execution. Therefore the
“mystery” of the lost Romanov children was settled and closed once and for all.
The canonization of
the last Russian royal family
In 2000 Anastasia and her family were canonized as passion
bearer by the Russian Orthodox Church. The family had previously been canonized
by the church in 1981 as holy martyrs. The bodies of Emperor Nicholas,
Alexandra and three of their daughters were interred in St. Catherine’s Chapel
in St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg on July 17, 1998.
Anastasia, the
Russian grandma in the Philippines
In the Philippines the mystery of Anastasia lives on. Cathy Petersen, a Fiiipina with a Russian
heritage, claimed that her grandmother was from Russia who escaped from the
revolution in 1918. Her grandma boarded a ship from
Vladivostok along with
other Russians “Whites”. Her grandma was locked in a cabin and isolated from the
rest of the passengers. Most of the passengers were disembarked in China while
her grandma along with nuns was disembarked in Manila, Philippines.
Cathy’s grandma who identified herself as Anastasia was
brought to a monastery and later to the house of a wealthy spinster where she
met a Filipino who later became her husband. She said that her grandma was
reclusive and afraid to be seen by other white people. Her grandma was very secretive and showed
reluctance to divulge some important information even to her own family about
her life. When asked by her family of her behavior, she told them that
if ever other people knew her identity it might endanger them all.
She told the members of the family that he had a
brother named Alexei and three sisters. And her favorite sister was Maria. She
told of an affluent life in Russia such as jeweled walls and golden carriage
drawn by eight horses. A picture of her grandma in her younger days showed
resemblance to Anastasia, the princess.
Cathy’s grandmother died in 1964, and
until May 2012 Cathy is still in search for her Russian roots.
There are
speculations that her mother could be the Anastasia of Russia, but Filipinos
dismiss the possibility of the claim because of the conclusive findings of DNA
experts on the remains of the emperor’s family not to mention the many
impostors who passed themselves off as Anastasia probably to gain fame and
fortune as the lost princess of the last Russian royal family. Furthermore, the
era when the grandma came to Philippines was a time when the country was an
unincorporated territory of the United States whose chief executive was the
American governor general. The Russian Revolution and WW1 on which the US
joined on the side of the Allied Forces were major events in the 21st
century. The entry of such known figure as Grand Duchess Anastasia in its
territory could not have escaped the notice of US authorities.
Anastasia in films
and song
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