Find out how the fate of the Romanovs developed after the false punishment in 1918.
The execution of the royal family in 1918 is one of the most macabre secrets of the twentieth century. Even the Orthodox Church could not give a clear answer to the question whether all members of the Russian imperial crown were deprived of life. At different times it was the church that questioned the authenticity of the remains of the Romanovs, carefully checking the version of the dissolution of the king's body in acid or the Vatican's concealment of Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. Could the really close relatives of the king have been saved, or did all their attempts to make themselves known - no more than the antics of impostors?
Official version
Emperor Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra Fyodorovna, and their five children (four daughters and one son, heir to the throne) were executed on the night of July 16-17, 1918 in the basement of Ipatiev's house in Yekaterinburg. The family of the emperor who was deposed from the throne by his allies from abroad was offered to organize an escape, but Nikolai Aleksandrovich flatly refused to behave like a fugitive criminal.
In part, this was due to the good treatment of the new government: members of the royal family, even though they were taken into custody, but were kind and friendly with them. Therefore, Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, princesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, and Tsarevich Alexei on that ill-fated day believed the words of Chekist and revolutionary Yakov Yurovsky. He invited them to go down to the basement, saying that there were riots in the city. There, the royal family and her closest servants were hastily read out the verdict and executed. The bodies were taken to the Koptyakovsky forest, and then they were bathed in acid and thrown into the well. The authorities had to go for this, in order to avoid worshiping bodies as idols.
The modern version of the historians says: the Soviet authorities were perfectly aware that the bloody slaughter in the cellar would be extremely negatively perceived by the whole world. Therefore, the possibility to give a statement through the press was seriously discussed, that the tsar fled, or that he was killed, and the family was evacuated to Europe. Anyway, on July 18 an explanatory decree issued by the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, in which it was said that Nicholas II was shot because the counter-revolutionaries regularly tried to take him away from power in order to return the former regime.
How did the widow, the Grand Duchesses and the prince manage to escape?
In favor of the version that the family of the tsar at the last moment was pitied by enemies or pulled out of the clutches of death by loyal friends, the vague testimony of the investigators who triggered the order about the execution is spoken. Would they doubt what they saw with their own eyes?
Nikolai Sokolov, a judicial investigator, wrote in an official report that the empress and her children had been evacuated somewhere. Nikolai cited as an argument the fact that the examination of the house by white officers proved that many people were shot in it to simulate the murder of members of the royal family. Sokolov was threatened and he left the country in a hurry, having had time to migrate to France. His assistant was shot to cover his tracks ...
Soviet power for a long time had to hide the fact that the family of the deposed emperor survived. Constantly there were eyewitnesses who saw the Empress and children in different cities of Russia. And the royal doctor Derevenko, who had accompanied the royal family all his life, refused to identify the emperor and his heir to the corpses delivered to him, because they did not have the characteristic scars and birthmarks about which the doctor was well informed. In the KGB, the Soviet even created a department for tracking the movements of the surviving Romanovs.
Against the backdrop of many theories that members of the royal family were scattered across Russia's borders and even Stalin visited them, in 2013 the book "The Truth About the Tragedy of the Romanovs" by the French history professor Mark Ferro, who has documents confirming the negotiations On the transfer of the queen and her daughters to the authorities of Germany.
After these negotiations were crowned with success, the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolayevna fell under the protection of the Vatican and was decorated by the godson of the former German Kaiser Wilhelm II, because he expressed a desire to provide the tsar's person with some decent living.
The Grand Duchess Maria became the wife of a runaway Ukrainian prince, because only he was able to understand her pain and distress.
The Empress Alexandra Fedorovna refused to lead the revolutionary movement, for which she later received personal thanks in a letter from Stalin and the order:
"Live, no one will touch you, but do not meddle with politics."
Alexandra Feodorovna, together with her daughter Tatyana, dedicated her life to God in a Polish convent. Anastasia alone fled from Perm: mother and sisters could not find out what became of her.
Mark Ferro says that the story of the false murder of members of the ruling family suited everyone. White officers preferred to hide in Europe and did not want to recall the past, and the ruling authorities could not open the secret of the Romanovs' home, fearing a riot. As the last argument he gives photos of the diary of Grand Duchess Olga, accidentally found by the American journalist Maria Stravalo in the archives of the Vatican. In the diary was found a document certified by a notary, in which it was said that in 1955 Olga took the name of Marja Bodts.
Mark's book ends with the phrase:
"... now it is for certain established that the family of Nicholas II survived, unlike him."
And how can you not trust him?