The Real Story of Anastasia Romanov
The early 20th century was a time of significant turmoil in Russia. The Romanov dynasty, which had ruled Russia for more than 300 years, was in its twilight, facing increasing opposition over economic hardship and disastrous World War I military failures. In March 1917, the Russian Revolution forced Tsar Nicholas II to step down; just over a year later, he and his wife and children were killed in secret by Bolshevik revolutionaries.
For years, the fate of the Romanov family was shrouded in mystery, leaving room for myths about their survival. Theories about one family member in particular — the tsar’s youngest daughter, Anastasia — flourished. The grand duchess inspired not only conspiracies and impostors, but Broadway plays and Hollywood movies. More than 100 years later, her story remains one of the 20th century’s most compelling mysteries. But who exactly was Anastasia, and what really happened to her?
Anastasia Nikolaevna Romanov, the fourth and youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, was born on June 18, 1901. (Their son Alexei, the heir to the throne, was born three years later.) Anastasia was known for her sense of humor and mischievous personality. Gleb Botkin, the son of the family’s physician, said that “in naughtiness, she was a true genius,” describing her as “witty, vivacious, hopelessly stubborn, [and] delightfully impertinent.”
When her father was forced to abdicate the throne in early 1917, the lives of Anastasia and her family were uncertain. The Romanovs and their staff were sent to Siberia, where they lived in relative peace and normalcy, all the while holding out hope that they could make their way to England, where Nicholas II’s cousin, King George V, reigned. But later that year, after Vladimir Lenin’s Bolsheviks seized power, the royal family was relocated again, to a house in the Russian city of Yekaterinburg. It would be their last move.
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In the early morning hours of July 17, 1918, Bolshevik forces killed Anastasia, then just 17, and her family in the basement of the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg. True to her personality, the young grand duchess was said to have thumbed her nose at executioner Yakov Yurovsky just hours before her death. The family was quickly, and rather chaotically, buried in unmarked graves nearby, and while the Bolsheviks admitted to the murder of Nicholas II, they covered up the deaths of the rest of the family, giving only vague information. The ambiguity sparked rumors that some members of the family may have survived.
The years that followed saw alleged sightings of the “missing” royal family, and numerous imposters claiming to be surviving Romanov children. Anastasia was at the center of the conspiracies, with several women claiming to be the grand duchess: One imposter named Eugenia Smith penned an “autobiography” detailing her supposed escape, while another woman named Nadezhda Vasilyeva was imprisoned by the Bolsheviks and put in an asylum for her claims.
The most famous claimant was known as Anna Anderson. In 1920, Anderson was rescued from a Berlin canal. While her identity was initially unknown, in 1922 she claimed to be none other than Grand Duchess Anastasia (she adopted the “Anna” moniker later), insisting that she had survived the execution and fled with the help of a guard. Her story had its share of skeptics and believers, and lengthy legal battles aimed at proving her identity garnered significant media attention over the years. Anderson died in 1984, and DNA testing in 1994 ultimately debunked her claim.
Anderson’s story became part of Anastasia’s own over the years, and it was indicative of the public intrigue around the mystery — one that inspired a hit Broadway play in the 1950s, a 1956 feature film that won actress Ingrid Bergman an Academy Award and Golden Globe for her portrayal of Anastasia, and a popular animated musical released in 1997 by 20th Century Fox (which itself was adapted into a 2017 Broadway musical).
In 1926, the deaths of the Romanov family were officially confirmed, but the Soviet Union denied responsibility, and discussion of the matter was suppressed. While a burial site was found near Yekaterinburg in 1979, it was largely kept a secret. In 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union, the remains at the site were exhumed and later identified as most of the Romanov family and their staff — but two family members were missing, further fueling conspiracy claims that they had escaped. In 2007, four years after the Church of All Saints was built on the site where the Ipatiev House once stood, another grave was found nearby, containing the remains of the missing family members, and putting many of the myths around the Romanovs to rest.
