Anastasia

Anastasia –Youngest Daughter of Tsar Nicholas II

Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, who was the last sovereign of Imperial Russia and his wife, Tsarina Alexandra Fyodorovna. Anastasia was the younger sister of Grand Duchess Olga, Grand Duchess Tatiana and Grand Duchess Maria and the elder sister of Alexei Nikolaevich, Tsarevich of Russia.

Anastasia was born on June 18, 1901 in Petrodvorets, Russia, a town in the proximity of St. Petersburg which was earlier known as Peterhof. Anastasia’s mother was Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt also known as Alexandra Feodorovna and became known as Empress Alexandra after her marriage. Nicholas II, her father was the final tsar of Russia as well as part of the Romanov dynasty which ruled the country for a period of three centuries.

Her parents had married in late 1884 soon after the dead of her grandfather, Tsar Alexander III who died of kidney disease and her father had inherited the throne. During her younger days, Anastasia was educated by her mother who taught her spelling and prayers and as she grew older, she was provided with a Swiss tutor. Anastasia as well as her sister Maria were looked after by a governess while her older sisters were taken care of, by their mother’s lady-in-waiting.

Family Exiled to the Ural Mountains, Under House Arrest

The closely knit Rumanov family had lived in peace at Tsarskoe Palace till Nicholas II caused growing public hostility during the World War I. In March of 1917, while the soldiers launched a mutiny and started seizing royal property, Nicholas II settled to renounce the throne with a hope of preventing a Russian civil war. His family were then exiled to the Ural Mountains and were placed under house arrest. Unfortunately, a civil war could not be avoided and on July 17, 1918 while the Bolsheviks led by Vladmir Lenin fought to replace imperial rule with a new Communist regime, the Romanov family were awaken in the middle of the night and asked to get dressed.

 On the orders of the Supreme Soviet council of Russia, Yakov Yurovsky, the commandant of the Special House of Purpose, the Romanov family were led down a basement with the pretext that they were being protected from the imminent chaos of counter revolutionaries. They were met by a group of executioner who openly fired them.

Executed in an Extra-Judicial Killing

On July 17, 1918 Anastasia had been executed along with her family in an extra-judicial killing by the members of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police and the Romanov legacy seemed to be ended in that cold basement forever.

Speculation arose as to whether she and her brother Alexei Nikolaevich could have survived. Rumours on the possibility of her escape spread after her death, powered by the fact that the place of her burial seemed to be unknown during the decades of Communist rule.

The mass grave which held the remains of the Tsar, his wife together with their three daughters near Yekaterinburg was discovered in 1991 and the bodies of Alexei Nikolaevich as well as the remaining daughter who was either of Anastasia or her older sister Maria were revealed in 2007.The possibility of her survival had been disproven and forensic analysis as well as DNA testing confirmed that the remains were those of the imperial family, which indicated that all four grand duchess had been killed in 1918.