did the children have the right to leave russia after the revolution?

It is perhaps not so simple. Theoritically, they had the right. In fact, the Provisionnal government had to face every day the soviets of deputies and soldiers who were already extremely violents and very regarding about the fact the Romanov stayed emprisonned. I think that in those conditions of hatring it would have been extremly dangerous to move the Tsarevitch, and even the GD (in my opinion).
At the same time, people of the palace had to choose: staying or not, someone left, someone stayed. The most naturally way of the world the children choose to stay. They felt responsability in front of their moral sufferings parents and they had by those days hope the Provisionnal governement will arrange for them an accomodation in the south or give free way for the entire family.
As for the measles, let us remember that the girls were not really children anymore and that kind of illness is very severe for adults, as Sarushka said. Maria was almost at death, they had temperature more than 40 degrees, you can not transporte people in this state.
Robert, I do not see them so lost without their parents. Brocken destinity, certainly, psychological breackdown, probably and it is quite normal after so much events. But not more as the other Romanov abroad. I can not see in witch way Maria Pavlovna, Dmitri Pavlovitch, Natalie Paley, the surviving Konstantinovitchi do better than the Grand-Duchess could have done. Only my way of thinking of course.

Excellent points, Anna.  For myself, my mother told me  I "had all the usual childhood diseases". I do not remember them either. Way too young or I have burnt out too many brain cells.
  Matushka,  I mean to say, although the children  might have been old enough to be on their own, eventually, they were simply immature and unprepared for a life outside of tier very closed circle. You can thank Alexandra for that, IMO.
 They would have had no money so would be a financial liability to any family that took them in. Woefully  unprepared for life "outside" O & T were adult women, yet behaved as  simple school girls.  Their marriage prospects were nil, especially considering the  hemophilia trait they might have carried.
  The other Romanovs you mention were far more worldly- they were  the  what we would call the "jet set" of their day. They knew people and had places to go.  They may have been broke but did have resources. What would have the Imperial children have taken with them ? I doubt they would have taken much in the jewels department and if if they did, there was glut of royal jewelry on the market after the was and it would not have taken long to go through whatever they gained from them.
 Remember how the king of Denmark complained about the cost of supporting the Dowager Empress,  how would he have dealt with that brood on his doorstep ?
 Despite their faith & virtues, I do not think they would have fared well, other than, perhaps becoming  nuns in a cloistered convent. They would  have been considered almost a tourist attraction in public. "The Survivors". Sad.

Perhaps the difference is between the wording.  They may have had the right to leave, but did they have the ability?  Did they have the desire?

And, as Robert said, did they have the means to support themselves without a royal marriage?

Perhaps the best scenario would have been that they go to their grandmother Marie Feodorovna and then to the Crimea with her.  They might have been able to leave the country on the Marlborough and maybe they could have gone into convents or nursing or found a man who would marry one with the threat of hemophilia.  Their great uncle Leopold did.

Firstly i think it is important to acknowledge that following the establishment of the Provisional Government - Nicholas and Alexandra were technically under house arrest, rumours of offers of asylum were met with dismay by the Soviet who put enormous pressure on the weak, rocking PG to ensure that they didn't leave.
Despite the offers of people to take the children out (which might have been possible) via Finland it was clear that the parents couldn't bear the thought of that happening.
I believe both were exceptionally short-sighted or exceptionally stupid or exceptionally trusting given that the precedent for deposed monarchs and their families wasn't a good one.
I think had Nicholas had some foresight and given the character of Kerensky the children could have relatively easily been moved to Finland and then out via neutral Sweden as they recovered from their illness - certainly people at the Alexander Palace offered to escort them.
I have to say that from everything we know then it is likely that the elder girls would have been extremely reluctant to have left without their parents.
After the second revolution I think that window vanished for good as most of the remaining Romanov's in Russia were arrested ..even Michael Alexandrovitch had left it too late (and he was on the point of leaving Russia when the OCtober Revolution occurred)

McDnab

I agree entirely. The Provisional Government was fairly benign towards the Romanovs, but it was never very stable and under enormous pressure. It would probably have been possible for the girls (and maybe Alexei) to leave up to October, but the window of opportunity was lost with the Bolshevik Revolution.

I agree that the girls would have been most reluctant to leave, and we should not be surprised at that (Sophia Chotek was killed with Franz Ferdinand because she insisted on staying with him!)

Ann

Just a theory, but perhaps the decision not to send their children to safety is another indication of why Nicholas and Alexandra were not good in their role as Emperor and Empress.

Good example, Ann.  There are plenty of others as well.  MA and the children stayed with Louis XVI, even when she had the opportunity to leave.  And recently  the Jackie interviews reveal she and the children were staying with JFK  during the missile crisis.
 Extremely cocooned families   did not envision a life out side that security and service.
  I went from "every wish" to " what we give you" A blank future.
 It w

sometimes I ask myself, what if the ''children'', better the grand duchesses and Alexei, had formerly asked to leave from Tobolsk or Ekaterinburg? why were they taken prisoners and how would the bolschevics have answered had a request like that been known to the west? I mean, they didn't want anyone to know what happened to the IF or to the other romanovs, so maybe if there had been some rumor BEFORE the executions things might have been different?

'Extremely cocooned families   did not envision a life out side that security and service.'

Again, I think we can contrast Prince and Princess Cantacuzene, whom I mentioned earlier on this thread, and who sent their three children to America via the Trans Siberian Railway in the summer of 1917, while the Provisional Government was still in power. Prince C was a Major General, commanding a brigade in Kiev, so presumably had a pretty good idea what was going on. Princess C (an American) took a keen interest in events. The children, particularly their 16-year-old son, were reluctant to go, and the Cs found sending them away on a potentially dangerous journey with their tutor in charge quite difficult, but they were realistic about it all.

Ann

sometimes I ask myself, what if the ''children'', better the grand duchesses and Alexei, had formerly asked to leave from Tobolsk or Ekaterinburg? why were they taken prisoners and how would the bolschevics have answered had a request like that been known to the west? I mean, they didn't want anyone to know what happened to the IF or to the other romanovs, so maybe if there had been some rumor BEFORE the executions things might have been different?

I think everyone in the world who knew the Romanovs were being held captive knew the children wanted to leave. They weren't in Ekaterinburg on vacation. If they could have left they would have, much earlier. Yurovsky and the Ural Bolshevik leadership weren't listenig to requests, formal or otherwise. By far the likeliest response to a formal request to leave  by one of the GDs, to walk out the door of Ipatiev House and catch the next train out of Ekaterinburg, would have been to have Yurovsky and the others laugh in their face and be told to get the hell back in their rooms, only expressed more crudely. The Bolsheviks held all the cards (the Romanovs) and everyone knew it. They were beyond being shamed or vulnerable to the indignant objections of any bourgeois government.

yes, I know you're right, yet I think much of the western world had lost interest of their case and most didn't (want to) believe they would be executed ... and at the time the bolsheviks needed at least some help from some western countries, like germany, to get out of the war, so maybe there would be a possibility for the girls. but everyone knew the family insisted on staying together, I have to disagree with you on this one.

I always try not to refer to the grand duchesses as "the children" because they were not at all children.  I think that calling them that makes a false impression on who they were at the time of the abdication and imprisonment.

I doubt that any young lady of the age of 16 or 18 or 20 or 22 would think of herself as a "child" and at that age in that time, young women of those ages could be married with families of their own.

As for Alexis, being just 14 at the time of his death makes him seem, to us, as a child, and his development was delayed by his illness so he might have been considered a child, but, to me anyway, not the grand duchesses.

Also, as I have mentioned before, they may have had the right to leave Russia, but not the ways or the means to go.  Also they were quite sick at the time of the abdication and Alix was a very possessive mother who would have thought that they should stay.  Alix's faith in God and her belief in "God's will" would have made her think that the family would be cared for as fate would have it.

'I always try not to refer to the grand duchesses as "the children" because they were not at all children.  I think that calling them that makes a false impression on who they were at the time of the abdication and imprisonment.'

That is entirely my view. Straying off topic, for me 'child' means under 12, though you can quite properly call someone a boy or a girl for a long time after that. By 1918 the elder three girls were young adults, and Anastasia and Alexei were teenagers (or adolescents if you prefer). None was a child, though they were Nicholas and Alexandra's children.

Back on topic. The girls, and possibly Alexei, might well have been permitted to leave Russia by the Provisional Government, had their parents wished them to leave, but once the Bolsheviks took over there was no ambiguity whatever about their situation. They were prisoners. Once they reached Ekaterinburg there was no possibility of their going.

Ann

Straying way off topic.  I think that calling the young people "children" makes their deaths seem even more horrific but I know that during the time when their deaths were found out, many of their relatives were saying "Even the children."

It is also easier to call them, as a group, the children - as Ann pointed out - the children of Nicholas and Alix.

But that is way off topic - so back to subject, although it has probably been worn out by this time.

[By 1918 the elder three girls were young adults, and Anastasia and Alexei were teenagers (or adolescents if you prefer). None was a child, though they were Nicholas and Alexandra's children.]

'I always try not to refer to the grand duchesses as "the children" because they were not at all children.  I think that calling them that makes a false impression on who they were at the time of the abdication and imprisonment.'

That is entirely my view. Straying off topic, for me 'child' means under 12, though you can quite properly call someone a boy or a girl for a long time after that. By 1918 the elder three girls were young adults, and Anastasia and Alexei were teenagers (or adolescents if you prefer). None was a child, though they were Nicholas and Alexandra's children.

Back on topic. The girls, and possibly Alexei, might well have been permitted to leave Russia by the Provisional Government, had their parents wished them to leave, but once the Bolsheviks took over there was no ambiguity whatever about their situation. They were prisoners. Once they reached Ekaterinburg there was no possibility of their going.

Ann

young adults extremely immature for their ages, prisoners of both the bolshevics and the love of their parents.