97-507: Sandarmokh ( Сандармох ; Karelian : Sandarmoh ) is a forest massif 12 km (7.5 mi) from Medvezhyegorsk in the Republic of Karelia where an unknown number, estimated in the thousands, of victims of Stalin's Great Terror were executed. More than 58 nationalities were shot and buried there by the NKVD in 236 communal pits over a 14-month period in 1937 and 1938. 1000 victims were from
194-499: A German princess, Sophia of Anhalt-Zerbst . In 1762, shortly after the death of Empress Elizabeth, Sophia, who had taken the Russian name Catherine upon her marriage, overthrew her unpopular husband, with the aid of her lover, Grigory Orlov . She reigned as Catherine the Great . Catherine's son, Paul I , who succeeded his mother in 1796, was particularly proud to be a great-grandson of Peter
291-492: A blue-and-white striped undershirt. In mid-2007, a Russian archaeologist announced a discovery by one of his workers. The excavation uncovered the following items in the two pits which formed a "T": Geneticists used a combination of autosomal STR and mtDNA sequencing to detect relationships between the family members' remains. Using a DNA sample from Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh , a grand nephew of Alexandra, scientists matched his DNA to her and her children's remains found in
388-514: A cousin of Nicholas II, had been exiled to the Caucasus in 1916 for his part in the murder of Grigori Rasputin, and managed to escape Russia. Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaievich , who was supreme commander of Russian troops during World War I prior to Nicholas II taking command, along with his brother, Grand Duke Peter , and their wives, Grand Duchesses Anastasia and Militza , who were sisters, and Peter's children, son-in-law, and granddaughter also fled
485-681: A favorite grandchild of Queen Victoria of the United Kingdom. Though a kind-hearted man, he tended to leave intact his father's harsh policies. For her part the shy Alix, who took the name Alexandra Feodorovna, became a devout convert to Orthodoxy as well as a devoted wife to Nicholas and mother to their five children, yet avoided many of the social duties traditional for Russia's tsarinas. Seen as distant and severe, unfavorable comparisons were drawn between her and her popular mother-in-law, Maria Fyodorovna. When, in September 1915, Nicholas took command of
582-648: A future democratic referendum, effectively terminating the Romanov dynasty's rule over Russia. After the February Revolution, Nicholas II and his family were placed under house arrest in the Alexander Palace . While several members of the imperial family managed to stay on good terms with the Provisional Government and were eventually able to leave Russia, Nicholas II and his family were sent into exile in
679-540: A granddaughter of Queen Victoria and elder sister of Tsarina Alexandra . Following the 1905 assassination of her husband, Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich , Elisabeth Feodorovna had ceased living as a member of the Imperial family and took up life as a serving nun , but was nonetheless arrested and slated for death with other Romanovs. They were thrown down a mine shaft into which explosives were then dropped, all being left to die there slowly. The bodies were recovered from
776-456: A mass grave in the fortress, though Dmitry Konstantinovich's body was collected by his former adjutant, rolled up in a rug and taken away for a private burial in the garden of a house in Petrograd, where he remains to this day. In 1919, Maria Feodorovna, widow of Alexander III, and mother of Nicholas II, managed to escape Russia aboard HMS Marlborough , which her nephew, King George V of
873-548: A mistress, Princess Catherine Dolgorukova . Immediately following the death of his wife in 1880 he contracted a morganatic marriage with Dolgorukova. His legitimization of their children, and rumors that he was contemplating crowning his new wife as empress, caused tension within the dynasty. In particular, the grand duchesses were scandalized at the prospect of deferring to a woman who had borne Alexander several children during his wife's lifetime. Before Princess Catherine could be elevated in rank, however, on 13 March 1881 Alexander
970-411: A result of multiple bullet wounds. Then the dark room where the family was held filled with smoke and dust from the spray of bullets. With limited visibility, the gunmen shot blindly, often hitting the ceiling and walls, creating more dust and debris. As a result of this many of the gunmen themselves became injured. Alexandra was soon shot in the head by military commissar Peter Ermakov and was killed. It
1067-760: A result of the February Revolution ended 304 years of Romanov rule and led to the establishment of the Russian Republic under the Russian Provisional Government in the lead-up to the Russian Civil War of 1917–1922. In 1918, the Bolsheviks executed Nicholas II and his family. Of the House of Romanov's 65 members, 47 survivors went into exile abroad. In 1924, Grand Duke Kirill Vladimirovich ,
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#17328593065511164-452: Is Dimitri Konstantinovich . The family fortunes soared when Roman's daughter, Anastasia Zakharyina , married Ivan IV ("the Terrible") on 3 (13) February 1547. Since her husband had assumed the title of Tsar of all Russia , which derives from the title " Caesar ", on 16 January 1547, she was crowned as the first tsaritsa of Russia. Her mysterious death in 1560 changed Ivan's character for
1261-594: Is a memorial to the crimes of Stalin and his regime and since 1998 has been the focus of an international Day of Remembrance on 5 August every year. On 27 October 1937, 1,116 prisoners were loaded onto three barges and taken from Solovki to the mainland. Only in 1996, thanks to the efforts of Veniamin Ioffe [ ru ] (1938–2002), co-chairman of the Memorial research centre in St Petersburg, documents were found in
1358-466: Is one Andrei Kobyla , attested around 1347 as a boyar in the service of Simeon , the prince of Moscow and grand prince of Vladimir . Later generations assigned to Kobyla an illustrious pedigree . An 18th-century genealogy claimed that he was the son of the Old Prussian prince Glanda Kambila, who came to Russia in the second half of the 13th century, fleeing the invading Germans . Indeed, one of
1455-619: The Butovo killing field near Moscow. Today, thanks to the Memorial Society , to Veniamin Ioffe and Yury Dmitriev, over 5,000 of the dead of Sandarmokh can again be named and remembered individually, at the place where they lie buried. Ukraine declared 2012 as "Sandarmokh List Year" in reference to several hundred Ukrainian language writers and poets from the Executed Renaissance who were arrested, shot, and buried at Sandarmokh after
1552-603: The Danish royal family . In 2005 the coffin with her remains was moved to the Peter and Paul Fortress to be buried beside that of her husband. The transfer of her remains was accompanied by an elaborate ceremony at Saint Isaac's Cathedral officiated by Patriarch Alexy II of Moscow . Descendants and relatives of the Dowager Empress attended, including her great-grandson Prince Michael Andreevich , Princess Catherine Ivanovna of Russia ,
1649-587: The Decembrist revolt . Nicholas I fathered four sons, educating them for the prospect of ruling Russia and for military careers, from whom the last branches of the dynasty descended. 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
1746-739: The Finnish diaspora who emigrated to the USSR during the Great Depression and who were later arrested and shot at Sandarmokh as a part of the Finnish Operation of the NKVD , are listed by John Earl Haynes and Harvey Klehr in their study In Denial: Historians, Communism, and Espionage (2003). They included 141 Finnish Americans , and 127 Finnish Canadians . It is often said or assumed of Soviet mass executions that they were carried out by firing squad . For
1843-687: The Great Turn , when new Soviet General Secretary Joseph Stalin decided, as a preliminary to the Holodomor , to reverse the Post-1917 policies of Korenizatsiya and Ukrainianization . These otherwise Pro- Soviet writers refused to submit to Stalin's return to the House of Romanov 's policy of the coercive Russification of Ukraine and were shot, according to the Ukrainian Government, because they inspired
1940-736: The Moscow Patriarchate . In 2006 representatives of the Romanov family were making plans to re-inter the remains elsewhere. The town became a place of pilgrimage to the memory of Elisabeth Fyodorovna, whose remains were eventually re-interred in Jerusalem . On 13 June 1918, Bolshevik revolutionary authorities killed Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich of Russia and Nicholas Johnson (Michael's secretary) in Perm . Their bodies have never been found. The exiled Grand Duke Nicholas Konstantinovich of Russia died on 26 January 1918, with some rumors claiming he
2037-567: The Russian nobility at the time) under the reigning Rurik dynasty , which became extinct upon the death of Feodor I in 1598. The Time of Troubles , caused by the resulting succession crisis , saw several pretenders and imposters lay claim to the Russian throne during the Polish-Lithuanian occupation . On 21 February 1613, the Zemsky Sobor elected Michael Romanov as tsar , establishing
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#17328593065512134-663: The Solovki special prison in the White Sea . It was long thought that the barges carrying them were deliberately sunk on the way to the mainland, drowning all the prisoners on board. Others were rounded up during the Great Terror in Karelia, in accordance with quotas for prisoners, 'enemies of the regime', and a variety of "national operations". According to available documentation at least 6,000 were shot and buried at Sandarmokh. Today Sandarmokh
2231-576: The Zemsky Sobor on every important issue. This strategy proved successful. The early Romanovs were generally accepted by the population as in-laws of Ivan the Terrible and viewed as innocent martyrs of Godunov's wrath. Mikhail was succeeded by his only son Alexei , who steered the country quietly through numerous troubles. Upon Alexei's death, there was a period of dynastic struggle between his children by his first wife Maria Ilyinichna Miloslavskaya ( Feodor III , Sofia Alexeyevna , Ivan V ) and his son by his second wife Nataliya Kyrillovna Naryshkina ,
2328-607: The de facto rule of Russia. Upon the childless death of Feodor, the 700-year-old line of the Rurik dynasty came to an end, ushering in the Time of Troubles . After a long struggle, the party of Boris Godunov prevailed over the Romanovs, and the Zemsky Sobor elected Godunov as tsar in 1598. Godunov's revenge on the Romanovs led to all the family and its relations being deported to remote corners of
2425-407: The royal equerries . One of Kobyla's sons, Feodor , a member of the boyar duma of Dmitry Donskoy , was nicknamed Koshka ("cat"). His descendants took the surname Koshkin, then changed it to Zakharin (descendants of Zakhary ), which later split into two branches: Zakharin-Yakovlev (descendants of Yakov Zakharyevich) and Zakharin-Yuriev (descendants of Yuri Zakharyevich). During the reign of Ivan
2522-511: The 1850s, practically all marriages had been with German princelings. His son Alexander III succeeded Alexander II. This tsar, the second-to-last Romanov emperor, was responsible for conservative reforms in Russia. Not expected to inherit the throne, he was educated in matters of state only after the death of his older brother, Nicholas. Lack of diplomatic training may have influenced his politics as well as those of his son, Nicholas II. Alexander III
2619-624: The Belbaltlag ( White Sea–Baltic Canal ) camp system. A smaller group of 1,111 prisoners were brought there from Solovki prison camp . Together they made up almost half of those shot during the Great Terror in Karelia. "Alongside hard-working peasants, fishermen and hunters from nearby villages", wrote Yury Dmitriev, "there were writers and poets, scientists and scholars, military leaders, doctors, teachers, engineers, clergy of all confessions and statesmen who found their final resting place here." Among
2716-498: The Duke of Fife. In the early 1990s, considerable controversy surrounded the accuracy of mtDNA heteroplasmy for DNA testing particularly for distant relatives. In an attempt to refine the results of the investigation, Russian authorities exhumed the remains of Nicholas II's brother, George Alexandrovich. George's remains matched the heteroplasmy of the remains found in the grave indicating that they did in fact belong to Tsar Nicholas II. After
2813-591: The German House of Oldenburg that reigned in Denmark ), ascended to the throne and adopted his Romanov mother's house name. Officially known as members of the House of Romanov, descendants after Elizabeth are sometimes referred to as Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov . Paul I became the first heir to the throne, having the title tsesarevich , which was subsequently used for all main heirs. The abdication of Nicholas II on 15 March [ O.S. 2 March] 1917 as
2910-411: The Great, although his mother's memoirs arguably insinuate that Paul's natural father was, in fact, her lover Sergei Saltykov , rather than her husband, Peter. Painfully aware of the hazards resulting from battles of succession, Paul decreed house laws for the Romanovs – the so-called Pauline Laws , among the strictest in Europe – which established semi-Salic primogeniture as the rule of succession to
3007-504: The Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov line were: Paul (1796–1801), Alexander I (1801–1825), Nicholas I (1825–1855), Alexander II (1855–1881), Alexander III (1881–1894), and Nicholas II (1894–1917). 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
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3104-563: The Memorial Education and Information Centre in St Petersburg. In 2015 Dmitriev recounted how he, Flige and the late Veniamin Ioffe had found the burial site. According to documents found in the FSB archives in Arkhangelsk , there were people of 58 nationalities among those shot at Sandarmokh. Three hundred personal plaques and memorials have been erected around the site since 1997 to commemorate
3201-495: The Romanovs as Russia's second reigning dynasty. Michael's grandson, Peter I , who took the title of emperor and proclaimed the Russian Empire in 1721, transformed the country into a great power through a series of wars and reforms. The direct male line of the Romanovs ended when Elizabeth died childless in 1762. As a result, her nephew Peter III , an agnatic member of the House of Holstein-Gottorp (a cadet branch of
3298-575: The Romanovs' rule". 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". The only exceptions, the morganatic descendants of the Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich (1891–1942), took (in exile) the surname Ilyinsky . The Romanovs share their origin with two dozen other Russian noble families. Their earliest common ancestor
3395-617: The Russian Crown in 1613. The large memorial church " on the blood " has been built on the spot where the Ipatiev House once stood. Nicholas II and his family were proclaimed passion-bearers by the Russian Orthodox Church in 2000. In Orthodoxy, a passion-bearer is a saint who was not killed because of his faith, like a martyr; but who died in faith at the hand of murderers. In the mid-1970s, Dr. Alexander Avdonin discovered
3492-668: The Russian North and Urals , where most of them died of hunger or in chains. The family's leader, Feodor Nikitich Romanov , was exiled to the Antoniev Siysky Monastery and forced to take monastic vows with the name Filaret . The Romanovs' fortunes again changed dramatically with the fall of the Godunov dynasty in June 1605. As a former leader of the anti-Godunov party and cousin of the last legitimate tsar, Filaret Romanov's recognition
3589-499: The Russian crown, Filaret's 16-year-old son Mikhail Romanov , then living at the Ipatiev Monastery of Kostroma , burst into tears of fear and despair. He was finally persuaded to accept the throne by his mother Kseniya Ivanovna Shestova , who blessed him with the holy image of Our Lady of St. Theodore . Feeling how insecure his throne was, Mikhail attempted to emphasize his ties with the last Rurikid tsars and sought advice from
3686-795: The Siberian town of Tobolsk by Alexander Kerensky in August 1917. In the October Revolution of 1917 the Bolsheviks ousted the Provisional Government. In April 1918, the Romanovs were moved to the Russian town of Yekaterinburg , in the Urals, where they were placed in the Ipatiev House . Here, on the night of 16–17 July 1918, the entire Russian Imperial Romanov family, along with several of their retainers, were executed by Bolshevik revolutionaries, most likely on
3783-524: The Soviet regime and, later, the Third Reich , this method of execution was the exception, not the rule. From early days onwards, the preferred Soviet method of quick despatch was to dig a trench and then, the executioner standing immediately behind the upright or kneeling victim, shoot the victims at point blank range in the back of the head. This was the infamous "nine grammes of lead". The victims tumbled into
3880-489: The State-run Rossiya TV channel announced briefly on 22 April 2018 that there would be new investigations at Sandarmokh "this summer". Agence France-Presse covered later developments in September 2018, citing critics who state that the digs have a political motivation to manipulate public opinion and an attempt to cover up Stalinist crimes. The European External Action Service 's EUvsDisinfo.eu website has classified
3977-506: The Terrible , the former became known as Yakovlev ( Alexander Herzen among them), whereas the grandchildren of Roman Yurievich Zakharyin-Yuriev changed their name to "Romanov". Feodor Nikitich Romanov was descended from the Rurik dynasty through the female line. His mother, Evdokiya Gorbataya-Shuyskaya, was a Rurikid princess from the Shuysky branch, daughter of Alexander Gorbatyi-Shuisky . A ninth generation ancestor of Michael I Romanov
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4074-476: The United Kingdom, had sent to rescue her, at the urging of his own mother, Queen Alexandra, who was Maria's elder sister. After a stay in England with Queen Alexandra , she returned to her native Denmark, first living at Amalienborg Palace , with her nephew, King Christian X , and later, at Villa Hvidøre . Upon her death in 1928 her coffin was placed in the crypt of Roskilde Cathedral , the burial site of members of
4171-582: The archives of the Arkhangelsk department of the Federal Security Service (FSB) throwing light on the subsequent fate of the "first Solovki transport". These included the lists of those men and women who were to be shot. (One died before he could be executed; four more were sent to other parts of the Gulag .) After years of work on the ground in Karelia by Yuri Dmitriev , this documentary evidence pointed
4268-425: The army at the front lines during World War I, Alexandra sought to influence him toward an authoritarian approach in government affairs even more than she had done during peacetime. His well-known devotion to her injured both his and the dynasty's reputation during World War I, due to both her German origin and her unique relationship with Rasputin , whose role in the life of her only son was not widely known. Alexandra
4365-457: The bodies were exhumed in June 1991, they remained in laboratories until 1998, while there was a debate as to whether they should be reburied in Yekaterinburg or St. Petersburg. A commission eventually chose St. Petersburg. The remains were transferred with full military honor guard and accompanied by members of the Romanov family from Yekaterinburg to St. Petersburg. In St. Petersburg remains of
4462-402: The children's clothing. Following the murder of the Romanov family, the Bolsheviks made several attempts to dispose of the bodies. Initially the bodies were to be thrown down a mineshaft; however, the location of the disposal site was revealed to locals, causing them to change the location. Instead of a burial, the Bolsheviks decided to burn two of the corpses of the former royal family. Burning
4559-516: The claims that Finns are responsible for the Sandarmokh killings as "pro-Kremlin disinformation". The head of the local museum, Serge Koltyrin, was arrested in October 2018, shortly after he publicly criticized the new excavations. He was convicted in a closed trial of pedophilia and sentenced to 9 years in prison. In early March 2020, a local court decided to release him due to a terminal illness, however,
4656-473: The corpses proved to be difficult as it took significant time, so the group resorted to disfiguring the pair with acid. In a rush, the Bolsheviks threw nine additional bodies into a grave and covered them with acid as well. The bodies of the Romanovs were then hidden and moved several times before being interred in an unmarked pit where they remained until the summer of 1979 when amateur enthusiasts disinterred and re-buried some of them, and then decided to conceal
4753-569: The country. Elizaveta Mavrikievna , widow of Konstantin Konstantinovich , escaped with her daughter Vera Konstantinovna and her son Georgii Konstantinovich , as well as her grandson Prince Vsevolod Ivanovich and her granddaughter Princess Catherine Ivanovna to Sweden. Her other daughter, Tatiana Konstantinovna , also escaped with her children Natasha and Teymuraz , as well as her uncle's aide-de-camp Alexander Korochenzov. They fled to Romania and then Switzerland. Gavriil Konstantinovich
4850-506: The day after the killing at Yekaterinburg of the tsar and his family, members of the extended Russian imperial family met a brutal death by being killed near Alapayevsk by Bolsheviks. They included: Grand Duke Sergei Mikhailovich of Russia , Prince Ioann Konstantinovich of Russia , Prince Konstantin Konstantinovich of Russia , Prince Igor Konstantinovich of Russia and Prince Vladimir Pavlovich Paley , Grand Duke Sergei's secretary Varvara Yakovleva, and Grand Duchess Elisabeth Feodorovna ,
4947-443: The death of Peter. His only son to survive into adulthood, Tsarevich Alexei , did not support Peter's modernization of Russia. He had previously been arrested and died in prison shortly thereafter. Near the end of his life, Peter managed to alter the succession tradition of male heirs, allowing him to choose his heir. Power then passed into the hands of his second wife, Empress Catherine , who ruled until her death in 1727. Peter II ,
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#17328593065515044-455: The district administration where the killing fields were found. She also interviewed Sergei Verigin, one of the Russian historians putting forward the new hypothesis. Russian newspapers and television had talked of "thousands" of POWs being shot by the Finns and buried at Sandarmokh: speaking on the record to Yarovaya, Verigin was more cautious and spoke of dozens and hundreds. The Karelian edition of
5141-476: The find until the fall of communism. In 1991 the grave site was excavated and the bodies were given a state funeral under the nascent democracy of post-Soviet Russia, and several years later DNA and other forensic evidence was used by Russian and international scientists to make accurate identifications. The Ipatiev House has the same name as the Ipatiev Monastery in Kostroma , where Mikhail Romanov had been offered
5238-404: The future Peter the Great . Peter ruled from 1682 until his death in 1725. In numerous successful wars he expanded the tsardom into a huge empire that became a major European power. He led a cultural revolution that replaced some of the traditionalist and medieval social and political system with a modern, scientific , Europe-oriented , and rationalist system. New dynastic struggles followed
5335-466: The imperial family were moved by a formal military honor guard cortege from the airport to St Petersburg's Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral where they (along with several loyal servants who were killed with them) were interred in a special chapel near the tombs of their ancestors. At the cathedral, the remaining Romanov family hosted a formal funeral for Tsar Nicholas II attended by many relatives and representatives from nations worldwide. On 18 July 1918,
5432-555: The last living member of the Imperial Family born before the fall of the dynasty, and Prince Dmitri and Prince Nicholas Romanov . Among the other exiles who managed to leave Russia were Maria Feodorovna's two daughters, the Grand Duchesses Xenia Alexandrovna and Olga Alexandrovna , with their husbands, Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and Nikolai Kulikovsky , respectively, and their children, as well as
5529-453: The last named group were prominent members of the intelligentsia from the many national and ethnic cultures of the USSR – for example, Finns, Karelians, and Volga Germans. Ukraine was especially singled out, losing 289 of its writers, dramatists and other public figures, the " Executed Renaissance ", in a single day. The following 25 individuals illustrate this variety. They are listed by surname in alphabetical order: Members of
5626-400: The late 1930s, as the skulls found at these sites amply testify. Cross-examined while under arrest in 1939, the chief executioner Mikhail Matveyev said he made the victims lie face down in the prepared trench and then shot them. Thanks to the efforts of Ivan Chukhin, founder of Memorial in Karelia, a national deputy to the Supreme Soviet (and the Duma) and Yury Dmitriev's mentor, the names of
5723-459: The leaders of the Old Prussian rebellion of 1260–1274 against the Teutonic order was named Glande. This legendary version of the Romanov's origin is contested by another version of their descent from a boyar family from Novgorod. His actual origin may have been less spectacular. Not only is Kobyla Russian for " mare ", some of his relatives also had as nicknames the terms for horses and other domestic animals, thus suggesting descent from one of
5820-401: The many victims of this killing field, both individually and as representatives of particular nations and cultures, and an international Day of Remembrance has been held there every 5 August since 1998. In 2010, Patriarch Kirill of the Russian Orthodox Church led the mass for the slain victims of Stalin at Sandarmokh, just as he and his predecessor Alexy II have done, every year since 2007, at
5917-424: The marriage was considered harmonious, producing six children and acquiring for Alexander the reputation of being the first tsar not known to take mistresses. His eldest son, Nicholas, became emperor upon Alexander III's death due to kidney disease at age 49 in November 1894. Nicholas reputedly said, "I am not ready to be tsar...." Just a week after the funeral, Nicholas married his fiancée, Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt ,
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#17328593065516014-400: The mass grave containing the remains of Nicholas II, Alexandra Feodorovna, and three of five Romanov children. The remains were found near Old Koptyaki road in Yekaterinburg, Russia. The grave contained 44 heavily degraded bone and tooth fragments. Avdonin released his discovery following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 prompting investigation by the Russian government. The area where
6111-507: The mass grave. The investigation concluded that Alexei and one Romanov daughter were missing. Experts continue to debate which daughter was missing from the grave as United States experts believe the missing child is Anastasia while Russian experts believe it to be Maria. Many believe that the two children that were not discovered in the grave managed to escape Russia before persecution. As for Nicholas II, scientists used mtDNA heteroplasmy using samples from Princess Xenia Cheremeteff Sfiri and
6208-414: The members of the troika which rubber-stamped decisions to shoot a list of individuals – the accused were not present at these sessions, no one defended their rights – and of the execution squad leaders became known by the mid-1990s. The man sent from Leningrad on 16 October 1937 to organise the shooting of the Solovki transport, Matveyev, was an experienced NKVD executioner. He
6305-418: The mine by the White Army in 1918, who arrived too late to rescue them. Their remains were placed in coffins and moved around Russia during struggles between the White and the opposing Red Army . By 1920 the coffins were interred in a former Russian mission in Beijing , now beneath a parking area. In 1981 Grand Duchess Elisabeth was canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia , and in 1992 by
6402-411: The monarchs of the Russian Empire claimed the throne as relatives of Grand Duchess Anna Petrovna of Russia (1708–1728), who had married Charles Frederick, Duke of Holstein-Gottorp . Thus they were no longer Romanovs by patrilineage , belonging instead to the Holstein-Gottorp cadet branch of the German House of Oldenburg that reigned in Denmark. The 1944 edition of the Almanach de Gotha records
6499-416: The name of Russia's ruling dynasty from the time of Peter III (reigned 1761–1762) as "Holstein-Gottorp-Romanov". However, the terms "Romanov" and "House of Romanov" often occurred in official references to the Russian imperial family. The coat-of-arms of the Romanov boyars was included in legislation on the imperial dynasty, and in a 1913 jubilee , Russia officially celebrated the "300th Anniversary of
6596-405: The orders of Vladimir Lenin . Late on the night of 16 July, Nicholas, Alexandra, their five children and four servants were ordered to dress quickly and go down to the cellar of the house in which they were being held. There, the family and servants were arranged in two rows for a photograph they were told was being taken to quell rumors that they had escaped. Suddenly, a dozen armed men burst into
6693-440: The others, including the young and frail tsarevich, would not die either from multiple close-range bullet wounds or bayonet stabs. The gunmen then proceeded to shoot each family member once again. Even so, two of the daughters were still alive 10 minutes later, and were then bludgeoned with the butt of a rifle ending their lives. Later it was discovered that the bullets and bayonet stabs had been partially blocked by diamonds sewn into
6790-463: 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. Despite his popularity, however, his family life began to unravel by the mid-1860s. In 1864, his eldest son, and heir, Tsarevich Nicholas , died suddenly. His wife, Empress Maria Alexandrovna , who suffered from tuberculosis, spent much of her time abroad. Alexander eventually turned to
6887-464: The people of Ukraine with their own national culture , filling them "with pride and strength". The thousands executed over 14 months from October 1937 to December 1938 fall into three broad groups. Many were from Karelia, a total of 2,344 free inhabitants of the republic. A smaller number (624) were forced "settlers" (i.e. peasants exiled to the North after the collectivisation of agriculture ). A great many of those shot (1,988) were already prisoners of
6984-612: 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. Initially, gunmen shot at Nicholas who immediately fell dead as
7081-687: The populace and dethroned Ivan VI in a coup d'état , supported by the Preobrazhensky Regiment and the ambassadors of France and Sweden. Ivan VI was murdered in 1764 while imprisoned, and his parents died from illness during their captivity. The Holstein-Gottorps of Russia retained the Romanov surname, emphasizing their matrilineal descent from Peter the Great, through Anna Petrovna (Peter I's elder daughter by his second wife). In 1742, Empress Elizabeth of Russia brought Anna's son, her nephew Peter of Holstein-Gottorp , to St. Petersburg and proclaimed him her heir. In time, she married him off to
7178-781: The prosecutor challenged this decision and Koltyrin died in a prison hospital on 2 April 2020. 62°51′49″N 34°43′12″E / 62.86361°N 34.72000°E / 62.86361; 34.72000 Karelian language Too Many Requests If you report this error to the Wikimedia System Administrators, please include the details below. Request from 172.68.168.132 via cp1112 cp1112, Varnish XID 393879865 Upstream caches: cp1112 int Error: 429, Too Many Requests at Fri, 29 Nov 2024 05:48:26 GMT House of Romanov The House of Romanov (also transliterated as Romanoff ; Russian : Рома́новы , romanized : Romanovy , IPA: [rɐˈmanəvɨ] )
7275-529: The reforms the more liberal Alexander II had pushed through were reversed. Alexander had inherited not only his dead brother's position as Tsesarevich , but also his brother's Danish fiancée, Princess Dagmar. Taking the name Maria Feodorovna upon her conversion to Orthodoxy, she was the daughter of King Christian IX of Denmark and the sister of the future kings Frederik VIII and George I of Greece , as well as of Britain's Queen Alexandra , consort of Edward VII . Despite contrasting natures and backgrounds,
7372-466: The remains were found was near the old Koptyaki Road, under what appeared to be double bonfire sites about 70 meters (230 ft) from the mass grave in Pigs Meadow near Yekaterinburg. The archaeologists stated that the bones were from a boy who approximately between the ages of 10 and 13 years at the time of his death and of a young woman who was between the ages of 18 and 23 years old. At the time, Anastasia
7469-405: The room and gunned down the imperial family in a hail of gunfire. Those who were still breathing when the smoke cleared were stabbed to death. 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
7566-582: The senior surviving male-line descendant of Alexander II of Russia by primogeniture , claimed the headship of the defunct Imperial House of Russia. Legally, it remains unclear whether any ukase ever abolished the surname of Michael Romanov (or of his subsequent male-line descendants) after his accession to the Russian throne in 1613, although by tradition members of reigning dynasties seldom use surnames, being known instead by dynastic titles ("Tsarevich Ivan Alexeevich", "Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich", etc.). From January 1762 [ O.S. December 1761],
7663-405: The son of Tsarevich Alexei, took the throne but died in 1730, ending the Romanov male line. He was succeeded by Anna I , daughter of Peter the Great's half-brother and co-ruler, Ivan V . Before she died in 1740 the empress declared that her grandnephew, Ivan VI , should succeed her. This was an attempt to secure the line of her father, while excluding descendants of Peter the Great from inheriting
7760-555: The spouses of Xenia's elder two children and her granddaughter. Xenia remained in England, following her mother's return to Denmark, although after their mother's death Olga moved to Canada with her husband, both sisters dying in 1960. Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna , widow of Nicholas II's uncle, Grand Duke Vladimir , and her children the Grand Dukes Kiril , Boris and Andrei , and Kiril's wife Victoria Melita and children, also managed to flee Russia. Grand Duke Dmitri Pavlovich ,
7857-437: The throne and later died without leaving a son. His brother, crowned Nicholas I , succeeded him on the throne in 1825. The succession was far from smooth, however, as hundreds of troops took the oath of allegiance to Nicholas's elder brother, Constantine Pavlovich who, unbeknownst to them, had renounced his claim to the throne in 1822, following his marriage. The confusion, combined with opposition to Nicholas' accession, led to
7954-522: The throne, requiring Orthodox faith for the monarch and dynasts, and for the consorts of the monarchs and their near heirs. Later, Alexander I , responding to the 1820 morganatic marriage of his brother and heir, added the requirement that consorts of all Russian dynasts in the male line had to be of equal birth (i.e., born to a royal or sovereign dynasty). Paul I was murdered in his palace in Saint Petersburg in 1801. Alexander I, succeeded him on
8051-403: The throne. Ivan VI was only a one-year-old infant at the time of his succession to the throne, and his parents, Grand Duchess Anna Leopoldovna and Duke Anthony Ulrich of Brunswick , the ruling regent, were detested for their German counselors and relations. As a consequence, shortly after Empress Anna's death, Elizabeth Petrovna , a legitimized daughter of Peter I, managed to gain the favor of
8148-468: The trench and were buried; sometimes another, control shot (контрольный выстрел, kontrolnyi vystrel) was fired into the victim's head to make sure he or she was dead, sometimes only one shot was used. (A rare, extended description by a former executioner of how such mass killings were organised can be found in Lev Razgon 's 1988 memoirs.) This was the method used at Sandarmokh, Krasny Bor and Svirlag in
8245-479: The way to the identification on 1 July 1997 of the Solovki prisoners' last resting place and that of another 5,000 executed individuals. By the suggestion of Ioffe, the location would subsequently be given the local (Karelian) name "Sandarmokh" (sometimes spelled "Sandormokh"), by the name of an abandoned khutor shown in old maps of the area. The story of that search and discovery was told in 2017 by Irina Flige, head of
8342-429: The worse. Suspecting the boyars of having poisoned his beloved, Ivan launched a reign of terror against them. Among his children by Anastasia, the eldest, Ivan , was murdered by the tsar in a quarrel; the younger Feodor , a pious but lethargic prince, inherited the throne upon his father's death in 1584. Throughout Feodor's reign (1584–1598), the tsar's brother-in-law, Boris Godunov , and his Romanov cousins contested
8439-495: Was assassinated by a hand-made bomb hurled by Ignacy Hryniewiecki . Slavic patriotism, cultural revival, and Panslavist ideas grew in importance in the latter half of this century, evoking expectations of a more Russian than cosmopolitan dynasty. Several marriages were contracted with members of other reigning Slavic or Orthodox dynasties ( Greece , Montenegro , Serbia ). In the early 20th century two Romanov princesses were allowed to marry Russian high noblemen – whereas, until
8536-407: Was 17 years old while Maria was 19 years. Their brother Alexei would have been 14 within two weeks of his murder. Alexei's elder sisters Olga and Tatiana were 22 and 21 years old at the time of the murder respectively. The bones were found using metal detectors and metal rods as probes. Also, striped material was found that appeared to have been from a blue-and-white striped cloth; Alexei commonly wore
8633-530: Was a carrier of the gene for haemophilia , inherited from her maternal grandmother , Queen Victoria. Her son, Alexei , the long-awaited heir to the throne, inherited the disease and suffered agonizing bouts of protracted bleeding, the pain of which was sometimes partially alleviated by Rasputin's ministrations. Nicholas and Alexandra also had four daughters: the Grand Duchesses Olga , Tatiana , Maria and Anastasia . The six crowned representatives of
8730-523: Was also a publication in the Finnish press. The motivation behind this claim and the supposed new evidence were both challenged. In a lengthy and detailed investigation, Russian journalist Anna Yarovaya examined the evidence and interviewed historians and those who had found the site. She talked to Finnish historians of the Second World War; Irina Flige of the Memorial Society and Sergei Kashtanov, head of
8827-405: Was crowned; Constantine renounced the throne before his brother's death, and Michael deferred his acceptance of the throne, effectively ending the monarchy. The February Revolution of 1917 resulted in the abdication of Nicholas II in favor of his brother Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich . The latter declined to accept imperial authority save to delegate it to the Provisional Government pending
8924-544: Was killed by the Bolsheviks. His morganatic son Prince Artemy Nikolayevich Romanovsky-Iskander was killed the following year in the Russian Civil War . In January 1919, revolutionary authorities killed Grand Dukes Dmitry Konstantinovich , Nikolai Mikhailovich , Paul Alexandrovich and George Mikhailovich , who had been held in the prison of the Saint Peter and Paul Fortress in Petrograd . The four Grand Dukes were buried in
9021-413: Was not until after the room had been cleared of smoke that the shooters re-entered to find the remaining imperial family still alive and uninjured. Maria attempted to escape through the doors at the rear of the room, leading to a storage area, but the doors were nailed shut. The noise produced as she rattled the doors attracted the attention of Ermakov. Some of the family were shot in the head, but several of
9118-401: Was physically impressive, being not only tall (1.93 m or 6'4", according to some sources), but of large physique and considerable strength. His beard hearkened back to the likeness of tsars of old, contributing to an aura of brusque authority, awe-inspiring to some, alienating to others. Alexander, fearful of the fate which had befallen his father, strengthened autocratic rule in Russia. Some of
9215-525: Was sought by several impostors who attempted to claim the Rurikid legacy and throne during the Time of Troubles . False Dmitriy I made him a metropolitan , and False Dmitriy II raised him to the dignity of patriarch . Upon the expulsion of the Polish army from Moscow in 1612, the Zemsky Sobor offered the Russian crown to several Rurikid and Gediminian princes, but all declined the honour. On being offered
9312-454: Was succeeded at Sandarmokh by I.A. Bondarenko and his deputy A.F. Shondysh. Matveyev survived into old age; his successors were both arrested in 1938 and shot in 1939 for "exceeding their authorisation". Starting in 2016, there were attempts to revise this account of the shootings at Sandarmokh, and claim that among the dead were Soviet POWs shot by the invading Finns in 1941–1944 . There were newspaper articles and TV broadcasts in Russia; there
9409-425: Was the reigning imperial house of Russia from 1613 to 1917. They achieved prominence after Anastasia Romanovna married Ivan the Terrible , the first crowned tsar of all Russia . Nicholas II , the last Emperor of Russia , and his immediate family were executed in 1918, but there are still living descendants of other members of the imperial house. The house consisted of boyars in Russia (the highest rank in
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