Here are the last known photos of four of the imperial children, taken aboard the Rus:
Alexei & Olga
Tatiana (facing the camera on the left, by the window) & Anastasia
These photos , while unimaginably precious, are hard to take. Because of the looks on thier faces of course, but also when
one compares them to the river of beautiful images that came before. These scratchy, poor images
make it seem like the family are already fading out , like a signal poorly received . What I'm trying to say is the photos themselves
are symbolic of the situation and heart breaking
http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=1251.msg98987#msg98987http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=1251.msg408623#msg408623Concerning the last photograph of Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna and Tsarevich Alexis Nicholaevich, taken on the steamer
Rus during the journey between Tobolsk and Tiumen in May 1918.
In an appendix to the Russian book on Sydney Gibbs,
Nastavnik, the editor devotes the first part of the Appendix (pp. 504-515) to refuting the speculations contained in FOTR as to what happened on board.
For more on that new book, see:
http://forum.alexanderpalace.org/index.php?topic=1251.msg536665#msg536665Pierre Gilliard and other members of the suite and servants who were on the
Rus with the Imperial children note in their various memoirs that they boarded the steamer at 11:30 AM on May 7/20, but set sail only at 5 PM. They also write that the steamer docked in Tiumen on the following morning, May 8/21. Volkov even states that they arrived at 8 AM.
As the editor of
Nastavnik points out, that photograph of Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna was first published in Trewin’s book (1975) on Sydney Gibbs (p. 103), where the caption reads: “Alexis and Olga on board the
Rus at the beginning of their last journey” [
emphasis mine, I.N.].
Thus it has been demonstrated that that now-famous photograph was taken on the Imperial children’s
first day on board the
Rus (i.e.,
before nightfall), and not on “the following day” as reported in FOTR (p. 141).
Obviously, too much has been read into that particular photograph. The editor of
Nastavnik rightly states that Grand Duchess Olga Nicholaevna’s mood, as caught in that photograph, is explained quite well by Baroness Sophia Buxhoeveden in her book
Left Behind, (p. 69):
“…Olga Nicolaevna had also greatly changed. The suspense and anxiety of her parents' absence, and the responsibility she bore when left as head of the house with her sick brother to look after, had changed the lovely, bright girl of twenty-two into a faded and sad middle-aged woman. She was the only one of the young girls who acutely realised the danger that their parents were in…”
