After the Romanovs: Russian exiles in Paris between the wars

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The remains of Nicholas, Alexandra and three of their children were excavated in a forest near Yekaterinburg in 1991 and positively identified two years later using DNA analysis. The Crown Prince Alexei and one Romanov daughter were not accounted for, fueling the persistent legend that Anastasia, the youngest Romanov daughter, had survived the execution of her family. Of the several "Anastasias" that surfaced in Europe in the decade after the Russian Revolution, Anna Anderson, who died in the United States in 1984, was the most convincing. In 1994, however, scientists used DNA to prove that Anna Anderson was not the tsar's daughter but a Polish woman named Franziska Schanzkowska. [14]

The Ipatiev House has the same name as the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma, where Mikhail Romanov had been offered the Russian Crown in 1613. The large memorial church " on the blood" has been built on the spot where the Ipatiev House once stood.They had met. The man who “wore overalls and carried a hose” was Sergey Posokhov who, in a former, pre-1917 life had been Admiral Sergey Posokhov, commander-in-chief of Russia’s Imperial naval forces, and once a “proud owner of four Rolls-Royces.” The Posokhov anecdote is but one of many fascinating and sad stories about how profoundly life had changed for the frequently aristocratic, “White Russians.” They were the Russians who had “a shared confidence that the Soviet government was a temporary phenomenon and that in a few months or at most a year it would be replaced by something else.” Let’s call the “whites” passionate anti-communists. Three days after the murders, Yurovsky personally reported to Lenin on the events of that night and was rewarded with an appointment to the Moscow City Cheka. He held a succession of key economic and party posts, dying in the Kremlin Hospital in 1938 aged 60. Prior to his death, he donated the guns he used in the murders to the Museum of the Revolution in Moscow, [66] and left behind three important, though contradictory, accounts of the event. The leaders of the provisional government, including young Russian lawyer Alexander Kerensky, established a liberal program of rights such as freedom of speech, equality before the law, and the right of unions to organize and strike. They opposed violent social revolution. Ivan Plotnikov, history professor at the Maksim Gorky Ural State University, has established that the executioners were Yakov Yurovsky, Grigory P. Nikulin, Mikhail A. Medvedev (Kuprin), Peter Ermakov, Stepan Vaganov, Alexey G. Kabanov (former soldier in the Tsar's Life Guards and Chekist assigned to the attic machine gun), [45] Pavel Medvedev, V. N. Netrebin, and Y. M. Tselms. Filipp Goloshchyokin, a close associate of Yakov Sverdlov, being a military commissar of the Uralispolkom in Yekaterinburg, however did not actually participate, and two or three guards refused to take part. [148] Pyotr Voykov was given the specific task of arranging for the disposal of their remains, obtaining 570 litres (130impgal; 150USgal) of gasoline and 180 kilograms (400lb) of sulphuric acid, the latter from the Yekaterinburg pharmacy. He was a witness but later claimed to have taken part in the murders, looting belongings from a dead grand duchess. [100] After the killings, he was to declare that "The world will never know what we did with them." Voykov served as Soviet ambassador to Poland in 1924, where he was assassinated by a Russian monarchist in July 1927. [104]

After Yekaterinburg fell to the anti-communist White Army on 25 July, Admiral Alexander Kolchak established the Sokolov Commission to investigate the murders at the end of that month. Nikolai Sokolov [ ru], a legal investigator for the Omsk Regional Court, was appointed to undertake this. He interviewed several members of the Romanov entourage in February 1919, notably Pierre Gilliard, Alexandra Tegleva and Sydney Gibbes. [127] The Sokolov investigation inspecting the mineshaft in Spring 1919 The remains of the dog "Jimmy" found by SokolovPerry, John Curtis, and Constantine V. Pleshakov. The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga. Basic Books (A Member of the Perseus Books Group), 1999. ISBN 0-465-02463-7. The best job for wellborn, but impoverished Russian men was that of taxi driver. It offered autonomy for one thing, and for it providing independence of action away from the monotony of factories, Rappaport relays that soon enough Russian taxi drivers were the ‘”aristocrats of the émigré work force.”’ Tourists in particular hoped to get increasingly legendary Russian taxi drivers simply because they were in no way typical. Again, these were people who had once lived in palaces. Though brought low in theory, they had that certain something. And they had stories to tell.

Pilgrims March in Memory of the Romanovs on the Centenary of Their Execution, The Moscow Times, 17 July 2018 , retrieved 22 July 2018

A population boom at the end of the 19th century, a harsh growing season due to Russia’s northern climate, and a series of costly wars—starting with the Crimean War—created frequent food shortages across the vast empire. Moreover, a famine in 1891-1892 is estimated to have killed up to 400,000 Russians. Many of the central powers from World War One, including the United Kingdom provided aid to the White Army to help them try to defeat the Red Army.

His preliminary report was published in a book that same year in French and then Russian. It was published in English in 1925. Until 1989, it was the only accepted historical account of the murders. [11] He wrongly concluded that the prisoners died instantly from the shooting, with the exception of Alexei and Anastasia, who were shot and bayoneted to death, [136] and that the bodies were destroyed in a massive bonfire. [137] Publication and worldwide acceptance of the investigation prompted the Soviets to issue a government-approved textbook in 1926 that largely plagiarized Sokolov's work, admitting that the empress and her children had been murdered with the Tsar. [11] Alexander II, son of Nicholas I, became the next Russian emperor in 1855, in the midst of the Crimean War. While Alexander considered it his charge to maintain peace in Europe and Russia, he believed only a strong Russian military could keep the peace. By developing the Imperial Russian Army, giving increased autonomy to Finland, and freeing the serfs in 1861 he gained much popular support for his reign.

After the February Revolution of 1917, a special decree of the Provisional Government of Russia granted all members of the imperial family the surname "Romanov". [ citation needed] The only exceptions, the morganatic descendants of the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (1891–1942), took (in exile) the surname Ilyinsky. [4] [7] Origins to 18th century [ edit ] A 16th-century residence of the Yuryev-Zakharyin boyars in Zaryadye, near the Kremlin Silver coin: 1 ruble Nikolai II Romanov dynasty – 1913 – On the obverse of the coin features two rulers: left Emperor Nikolas II in military uniform of the life guards of the 4th infantry regiment of the Imperial family, right Michael I in Royal robes and Monomakh's Cap. Portraits made in a circular frame around of a Greek ornament. Constantine Pavlovich and Michael Alexandrovich, both morganatically married, are occasionally counted among Russia's emperors by historians who observe that the Russian monarchy did not legally permit interregnums. Yet neither was crowned; Constantine renounced the throne before his brother’s death, and Michael deferred his acceptance of the throne, effectively ending the monarchy. Mystery Solved: The Identification of The Two Missing Romanov Children Using DNA Analysis, PLoS One. Clifford J. Levy (25 November 2007), "Sleuths say they've found the last Romanovs", The New York Times , retrieved 30 September 2016