I watched a documentary on the Russian tzars last night. The revolution was 100 years in the making, building up support and urgency, so the last Russian royal family were in the hands of fate. I don't think they could have done much to change anything, except to have left Russia earlier.
It was also interesting to learn that after Catherine the Great died, her son, Paul had been impatiently waiting to rule for 20+ years and there was no love lost between mother and son, so at that time he passed a new rule that no woman could ever again inherit the throne of Russia as they were defective (or something like that-- which is amazing since Catherine was considered one of the great rulers). Then Paul apparently burned all the papers bypassing him as the next Tzar in favor of his son, Alexander. After that, Paul had his father disinterred to be buried next to his mother, who had killed his father in order to take over the country from him. Then Paul was killed with his son, Alexander I consenting. This was not a wonderful family at this time.
One of the problems the last tzar and his family faced was that, although they were a loving family among themselves, Nikolaos II and his wife Alexandria were painfully shy and anxious. Maybe on some level they understood the fate that awaited them.
I've done a lot of research about the last ruling Romanov family, particulary their involvement with Rasputin. I agree with Thissal in that the overthrow of the Romanov family probably could not have been prevented considering how they governed their country and the relations the existed between the monarchy and their subjects. However, it has been said that Lenin was furious when he heard the news of the execution of the Czar and his family. It was his intention, aparently, that the Royal family should only be exiled, not brutally murdered as they were.
You can't help but wonder how much the past would have differed if the family was spared. In my opinion, I doubt we would remember them or be as interested in them as much as we are now since they would be the solely known as being the last imperial family, and not by their deaths. In that sense, Lenin was smart enough to realize it couldn't be a *good* thing to immortalize the family forever in death. Unfortunately, for the Czar and his family, they had to pay the price for the mistakes perpetuated for years and years by their family.
With all your research on the last Romanov family, do you know why they did not or could not get asylum with their relatives in England -- George V and in Germany -- the Kaiser? Weren't these rulers all rather close cousins?
Thanks for your reply Fireweaver. It seems only about 50 years before that, England and Germany attacked Russia when they invaded Turkey? (somewhere south of the Crimea), so it would seem they weren't too intimidated. It might have been due to all the crimes the tzar was charged with so of course the Bolsheviks would want to try him supposedly. Now Putin wants all those crimes pardoned and the family has already been canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.
But it is more understandable in those terms. The USA doesn't appreciate other countries which give safe harbor to certain individuals either.
Politics is the art of the possible, isn't it? So many countries make alliances, but as soon as the world political situation shifts, so do alliances.
I'm not quite sure Thissal but I can give you my opinion. World War I probably made the differences in regards to alliances. The United States (although they were badly needed to end the trenches and the four year stalemate) were heisitant to join England and France because their fellow ally was Russia. Despite fighting on opposite sides, Russia, Germany, and Austria-Hungary were not all [/I]that[I] different. All three countries were ruled by despots and that made the U.S. very anxious over entering an alliance with such a country. Then, the Czar was overthrown and Kerensky came to power. He wanted democracy in Russia. That is when the United States joined the war.
Under Kerensky's government, the Czar was exiled in Siberia. I think, in my opinion, the Czar was not given aslyum in another (safer) location because doing so could upset the alliance with the U.S. and their support was too badly needed. Moreover, I don't think anyone expected Lenin to appear on the scene. Probably, people expected the Czar would be allowed to leave Russia after the war was over. No one, at the time, could predict their fates.
Nick Paton Walsh in Yekaterinburg
Tuesday July 15, 2003
The Guardian
It is the site where a basement execution sealed the fate of the Romanovs. And now as Russia embraces its imperial history once again, it will be home to a £7m memorial church to open on Thursday, the 85th anniversary of the execution by the Bolsheviks of the last tsar and his family.
But the founding of a memorial church and museum on the site of the Ipatiyev House - used as a covert shrine throughout the last decades of Soviet rule - will be marred by a row over where Nicholas II's remains are buried.
While the Russian Orthodox church believes that after their execution, the bodies of the tsar and his family were dumped in a mineshaft in Galina Yama, just outside Yekaterinburg, experts say they have proved that the bodies were again moved to shallow graves on a road back towards the town.
However, the church refuses to recognise the spot where many believe Nicholas's body really lies.
Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra, four daughters, son Alexei and aides were executed at the height of the Russian civil war as the pro-tsarist white army marched on Yekaterinburg.
At 12.30am on July 17 1918, the family were beckoned from their beds to a basement.
"As soon as they arrived, Alexandra began asking why there were no chairs in the room," said Irina Sachkova, a local historian and museum worker. The reason soon became apparent. Some 30 minutes elapsed between the first and the last shots.
Amid the memorial church's marble floors and ornate paintings, a bare cross and box adorn the empty chamber which marks the basement where executioners took aim.
The bodies were taken to Galina Yama, where the killers threw a grenade down the mineshaft to disguise the identity of their victims. "They even put acid on the bodies," said Ms Sachkova on the site of the mineshaft, marked by an expensive memorial and surrounded by a monastery. "The world was not supposed to ever find out what they did."
Yet Alexander Avdonin, a local amateur archaeologist, used oral and archive evidence to unearth another burial site, not far from Galina Yama, at the old Koptyakov Road. He said the killers moved the bodies, fearing they had been seen.
In 1991, the remains were exhumed and sent for testing in Britain and the US. DNA from the British royal family - the last surviving close relatives of the Romanovs - was used to prove that all but Alexei and one daughter, Marie, were buried in Koptyakov.
Despite the church and a group of emigre scientists disputing the findings, the remains were buried in St Petersburg in 1998. Today the Koptyakov site is distinguished from the mosquito-infested swamp surrounding it by only a modest cross and some drooping flowers.
Boris Kosinsky, a spokesman for the local church, said the remains found at Koptyakov may have been innocents murdered so that their corpses could mask the whereabouts of the true Romanov graves. "If that is the case, they deserve a simple memorial for their tragic place in history," he said.
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History is powerful stuff. One day your world is fine. The next day it's knocked for a metaphysical loop. Was Napoleon really at Waterloo? Would that change for what I had for breakfast? - Anonymous
The church stands on the site where the Romanovs were shot
The Russian Orthodox Church has consecrated a golden-domed church on the site where Russia's last tsar and his family were killed by Bolshevik revolutionaries 85 years ago.
The ceremony in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg was attended by hundreds of people, including cellist Mstislav Rostropovich and the Grand Duchess of the Romanov dynasty, Maria Vladimirovna.
Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and his five children were shot dead in 1918 after the Bolshevik revolution overthrew the Tsarist system and installed communism.
The Church on the Blood was built at a cost of 328 million roubles (about US$1m), much of it donated by large companies, according to the Itar-Tass news agency.
It stands on the site of the house of an engineer named Ipatyev, where the Bolsheviks guarded the tsar and his family for 78 days before executing them in the cellar. The house was demolished in 1977.
A wife of one of Nicholas's relatives, Olga Kulikovskaya-Romanova, dedicated an icon called The Virgin Mary with Three Hands to the church. It was found at Ipatyev's home following the killing of the Romanovs.
Years of controversy
Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexy II was too ill to travel to Yekaterinburg, 1,500 kilometres (900 miles) east of Moscow.
But in a message to the faithful who attended the consecration, he said it was "a possible historic turn" for Russia and called for unity between the Russian Orthodox church, the state and the Russian people.
The tsar was believed by the church to have a divine right to rule
The patriarch said it was important "that at the place where the blood of the holy regal martyrs was spilled, where an attempt to destroy Russia was undertaken, should begin a revival of the glorious traditions under which both the authorities and ordinary citizens try to co-ordinate their affairs with God's precepts... to build the kind of fatherland that would correspond to the ideal of holy Russia".
The remains of Nicholas II, his wife and three of their five children, Tatiana, Olga and Anastasia, were unearthed from a mining pit near Yekaterinburg in 1991.
They were buried at the Peter and Paul Fortress in Saint Petersburg in 1998 after years of argument about their authenticity and several genetic tests.
The remains of two of the children (Alexei and Marie) have never been found.
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History is powerful stuff. One day your world is fine. The next day it's knocked for a metaphysical loop. Was Napoleon really at Waterloo? Would that change for what I had for breakfast? - Anonymous
Prince pays tribute to royal victim of Bolshevik purge
(Filed: 01/03/2003)
Grand duchess who was hurled down a mine is honoured at Windsor. Caroline Davies reports
The Prince of Wales paid tribute yesterday to his great-great-aunt, Grand Duchess Elizabeth of Russia, who was murdered by the Bolsheviks 85 years ago.
She and other members of the royal family were hurled down a half-flooded mine shaft and hand grenades were thrown after them.
Ten years after she was beatified by the Russian Orthodox Church, the Prince held a concert at Windsor Castle to raise funds for the Holy Convent of Saints Martha and Mary of Mercy in Moscow, which she founded.
The highlight of the concert, which featured sacred Russian Orthodox music, was the performance of a piece by Sir John Tavener, which the Prince commissioned in memory of the Grand Duchess and his grandmother, Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother.
Two hundred guests heard Elizabeth: Full of Grace performed at St George's Chapel.
Grand Duchess Elizabeth, known as "Ella", was born in 1864, a grand-daughter of Queen Victoria. She married Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich, the fifth son of Tsar Alexander II of Russia. She adopted the Russian Orthodox faith in 1891 and became a nun after her husband was killed by an assassin's bomb in the Kremlin in 1905.
She gave away all her jewellery, sold her other possessions and founded the convent and hospital where she lived until the Bolsheviks arrested her.
Grand Duchess Elizabeth was murdered in Alapayevsk on July 18, 1918, a day after the murders of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, including the Tsarina, her sister Alexandra.
She and other members of the family were blindfolded and thrown down a 200ft shaft and the grenades dropped in. The shaft was then closed.
They died a lingering death. Peasants told of hearing the victims singing psalms inside the shaft for several hours.
A year later Russian investigators reopened the shaft and found the Grand Duchess's body on a ledge 50ft from the top. Two unexploded grenades lay nearby.
The Grand Duchess was holding an icon of Jesus to her chest. Her body was taken to Palestine and she was buried in the Church of St Mary Magdalene of Gethsemane. Her statue is one of 10 representing Christian martyrs unveiled on the west front of Westminster Abbey by the Queen in 1998.
Sir John was asked to compose the piece because of his links to the Russian Orthodox Church, which he joined in 1977, and because of his reputation as an intensely religious composer.
He is best known for Song for Athene, which was sung at the funeral of Diana, Princess of Wales, and for his setting of William Blake's mystical poem, The Lamb.
Elizabeth: Full of Grace was performed by the Mariinsky Orchestra from St Petersburg, with choristers from St George's Chapel and Westminster Cathedral.
Afterwards the Prince hosted a private dinner at the castle, where guests included Camilla Parker Bowles and Prince Michael of Kent.
Proceeds from the evening also went to the Mariinsky Theatre, of which the Prince is patron.
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History is powerful stuff. One day your world is fine. The next day it's knocked for a metaphysical loop. Was Napoleon really at Waterloo? Would that change for what I had for breakfast? - Anonymous
George V of England did not rescue his first cousin Nicholas II because monarchy was in precarious position all over Europe. The British people did not want Nicholas and his family given asylum in Britain and George possibly could have lost his throne. It was a decision that would haunt him for the rest of his life when the fate of the Imperial Family was finally known.
This is also the reason why George V moved so quickly to save the Greek Royals in the early 1920's. He didn't want their blood on his hands as well as the Russians. If he hadn't intervened, Prince Philip would not be where he is today.
I read Olga's Autobiography where she states that she actually did not like her grand princess life and prefered a more simple way. The book I thik was called the Last Grand Duchess or something like that.
Grandduchess Olga also lived in a danish town Ballerup, where she had a farm. I come from that town, and a couple a years ago the lokal museum had and exibition about her. Very interesting.
With all your research on the last Romanov family, do you know why they did not or could not get asylum with their relatives in England -- George V and in Germany -- the Kaiser? Weren't these rulers all rather close cousins?
I believe one of the reasons for this is because, King George was afraid that having the Romanovs in Britain, would remind the English people that they, too, could have a revolution. They certainly wouldn't have gone to Germany, as they were still at war with Germany under Kerensky's government.
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R.I.P OTMAA: Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatjana, Marija, Anastasija, Tsarevitch & Grand Duke Alexei.
I believe one of the reasons for this is because, King George was afraid that having the Romanovs in Britain, would remind the English people that they, too, could have a revolution. They certainly wouldn't have gone to Germany, as they were still at war with Germany under Kerensky's government.
Even if they were not at war, they could not go there. The Empress Alexandra and Kaiser Wilhelm detested each other, although first cousins!! Wilhelm had that effect on many of his relatives!!!
I made a Video for the Children of the last Tsar, Olga, tatjana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexej. It became sooo long that I cutted it into parts and it became a little series with 11 episodes:p .
"Looking back on her short life I often wonder why we did not see that she was quite too good for this world, her fit companions were the Angels." ~Margaretta Eager about Princess Elisabeth of Hesse (1895-1903)
The Last Romanov-Children: Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexey
These photos are from other Forums, most of them are originally from the Beinecke Romanov Albums
1. Olga and Tatiana with their uncle Ernst Ludwig of Hesse
2. Olga and Tatiana on horses
3. + 4. Three of the last photos of the Imperial Children 3. Alexey and Olga
5. Olga and Tatiana playing at a lake
6. Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia
7. Olga and Tatiana with their parents in 1908
8. + 9. Alexej in 1910
10. Olga, Maria, Anastasia, Alexey and Tatiana
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"Looking back on her short life I often wonder why we did not see that she was quite too good for this world, her fit companions were the Angels." ~Margaretta Eager about Princess Elisabeth of Hesse (1895-1903)
1. Maria
2. Olga, Maria and Tatiana
3. Anastasia
4. Anastasia, Alexey, Olga, Maria and Tatiana
5. Standing in a row, at the right of the Tsar: Tatiana, Olga, Maria, Anastasia and Alexey, the other children are their cousins
6. Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana
7. Playing in the snow
8. Olga
9. Anastasia running
10. Maria, Tatiana, Tsarina Alexandra, Anastasia and Olga
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"Looking back on her short life I often wonder why we did not see that she was quite too good for this world, her fit companions were the Angels." ~Margaretta Eager about Princess Elisabeth of Hesse (1895-1903)
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