Claimant of Grand Duchess Anastasia Nicholaevna - Eugenia Smith

Yes, I read the theory she was writing for someone else. I don't think though, that she was writing for the Anastasia who survived or something that nobody has ever heard of. She would have been much more credible anyway, if she had just said that she had her sources, or if she had not gotten involved with the false Alexei thing. She may have known some information not generally known, perhaps from sources, but that doesn't mean she was the front of some real, surviving daughter of Nicholas and Alexandra.

The angle I am exploring is for whom was she writing? That is the key to this story,

Consider the possibility, also, that it could be the other way around...

It may not have been that Eugenia Smith was writing for someone else.  It could well have been, instead, that it was a particular someone else who had actually done the writing... and that Smith, in fact, was only just posing as the claimant in place of the book's true author.

I can consider that. But the question becomes why would Smith do that? And how did she get away with it? Although ultimately proven a fraud, Smith did get away with posing as the GD for a short period of time. What would have been the purpose of that?

Yes, that could be. There is a great deal of conspiracy in this claimant's story. As it was, whoever she was posing for, she screwed it up. She ended up being more amusing than anything else. It is said she didn't die until 1995, but maintained her claim to the end? I have read she was given the chance to have a DNA test done on her, but refused. That might be because she was posing for someone else. I had always thought it was because she obviously wasn't a Romanov, and didn't want that proven. 

She died Jan. 31, 1997. On her naturalization papers, she claimed she was born in 1899 in Bukovina. She later changed her birthday and her birthplace to match that of AN.

1997 is very late for a claimant from early on to be still around. I do wonder who she really was, as she was more presentable than Anna Anderson, and not obviously crazy. I think there needs to be more written in books about her.

It would be funny if AA and ES met. I bet there would be some b**** slapping going on there lol.

But as for the topic, I don't think Ms. Smith knew anything at all. In fact if you notice she said in her book only she survived, but when Michael G. claimed he was Alexei and that Eugenia was his sister, she changed her story and THEN she said Alexei survived. So in reality, she did not know that in the future it would be Anastasia and Alexei missing from the grave.

[TWO]

Woah. Ignore what I wrote above. That was based only on what I read in Massie's book, but I took the time to actually read the original Life article on Eugenia Smith and it turns out she actually claimed in her story that one of the guard who "rescued" her (named Alexander, go figure ) removed TWO of the corpses from the back of the truck, but one was already dead but she "was still alive". Maybe this old hag really did know something we didn't.
Or one interesting theory is that her first story that she told LIFE mag. was the correct one, that she knew the real rescued Grand Duchess Anastasia before she died in Rumania in 1920, which would also explain those people who testified in the AA trials that it was an "open secret" that Anastasia Nicholaevna was staying in Rumania in 1919 and it was also explain all the rumors of GDA's escape.

This is just an interesting theory y'all so don't attack me too hard for this one. lol

I just thought this would be a good topic for discussion. If Anna Anderson and Eugenia Smith had for some reason or another met each other, what do you think they would have said to each other?

 I don't know why a meeting was never arranged between the 2 claimants. I mean, I'm sure Eugenia knew she was by far not the first 'Anastasia'.



(AA is on the left, Eugenia on the right)

[You]

I've been looking around to see what these two thought of each other, and I found something.

Eugenia said of Anna Anderson when someone brought her up (clenching her fists of course :

"Now I will fight them like cats and dogs and I will sue anybody who says one word against my family."

I say Give me a break Eugenia. You were the one copying off of her lol.


EDIT: According to the Lovell book (while alot of it is made up, the Milukoff tapes really do exist), Alexei Milukoff asked Anna Anderson about Eugenia  Smith and her only response was:
"Is it not incredible?"

If these 2 had only met I guaruntee someone would have gone home with a black eye haha.

Eugenia had puppy eyes. I mean, whenevever I come across her photo, I just go "awww".

I never go "awww" when I see Ms. Smith. She was a very well kept together woman, and I think she was completely sane and knew what she was doing the whole time. She wasn't a very good imposter at all. At least AA was believable in the way that she acted, you know, running around on roofs naked and having mental breakdowns and such. This is what I think the real Anastasia would have been like if she had survived after seeing her family murdered before her. I often wonder what happened to Franziska to traumatize her so badly. I personally think it's more than dropping the grenade and killing the man that scarred her like this. Maybe it had to do with her murdered husband.

Actually, I have pointed out on the Forum and to various historians that the Eugenia Smith story is remarkable among survivor stories because it's the only one published in the West prior to the fall of the Soviet Union which is correct as to the number of missing bodies. So, while it is obvious that Smith was not ANR, it is less obvious how she happened upon her information. Was it a lucky guess? Information from a real (but short term) survivor? Something else? We don't really know, but the probability of her being correct with a lucky guess is limited.

Actually, I have pointed out on the Forum and to various historians that the Eugenia Smith story is remarkable among survivor stories because it's the only one published in the West prior to the fall of the Soviet Union which is correct as to the number of missing bodies. So, while it is obvious that Smith was not ANR, it is less obvious how she happened upon her information. Was it a lucky guess? Information from a real (but short term) survivor? Something else? We don't really know, but the probability of her being correct with a lucky guess is limited.

I agree with you. Maybe it really was true that she knew the real Anastasia in Rumania as she originally claimed. Remember that it wasn't until the Spellers told her she was lieing that she "confessed" she was Anastasia. She screwed her story up when she did that, and she may have possibly hidden from us by doing so the truth of the Grand Duchess Anastasia's survival.

It all added up before she made this idiotic claim. The rumors of Anastasia's escape, the people who said that it was "an open secret" that Anastasia was living in Rumania in 1919, and Eugenia's orginal claim was that she had known the escaped Grand Duchess Anastasia in Rumania and was writing her memoirs before she died in 1920.

And it's also unlikely she stole the Rumania details from Anna Anderson's story because Eugina's immigration papers indeed listed her as coming from Rumania.



EDIT: As a side note, what was ES thinking when she claimed to be Anastasia?


I mean, at least Anna Anderson had similar eyes.

Just a tid-bit of information that I came across in the book  "Xenia; Once a Grand Duchess".  Xenia recounts that Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden
and the former Imperial dentist when to visit with Eugenia Smith.  They concluded that while Eugenia was very amiable she did not resemble the real Anastasia in any way.  The Baroness believed Mrs. Smith to be suffering from some form of a delusional disorder.  Of course it is well known that the Baroness was one of the first to visit the "other Anastasia" Anna Anderson and declare her a fraud.

What remains interesting about Eugenia is where she got her information, and the accuracy of it, given that she could not have been a survivor and that indeed, that there were no survivors.