"Grabbing at Straws"

[Mgmstl]

Penny, you are correct, she got enough things right that probably weren't common knowledge in 1920, including the photos of the IF in papers, they had to black & white or sepia back then.

Also, people seem to forget that Irene's son sent her a list of questions which she answered perfectly, admittedly after a couple of days.

Let's also not forget that Shura & Olga A. BOTH leaned towards her being AN in early conversations.

I see the Bolsheviks as less of a possibility as what would they have known about the daily life of the IF.
IF she was a plant, it had to be from someone who was on the inside, and knew these things and had a great deal of contact with her.  

I really don't believe she was insane either.  Just very high strung, and as the years went on this turned into eccentricity.

[Annie]

Also, people seem to forget that Irene's son sent her a list of questions which she answered perfectly, admittedly after a couple of days.

This hasn't been forgotton, it's been discussed a lot. The boy hadn't seen his cousin in years and didn't know her all that well. The questions were not so much personal stuff but from what I heard 'things a daughter of the Tsar would have known'

Let's also not forget that Shura & Olga A. BOTH leaned towards her being AN in early conversations.

Someone PLEASE repost the quotes from Olga A. about how 'as soon as I saw her my heart sank'  Olga may have been hopeful, and giving it a chance, but it is well documented she knew from the first moment it wasn't her neice.

I really don't believe she was insane either.  Just very high strung, and as the years went on this turned into eccentricity.

That would work with her being FS too.

[Annie]

In my analysis, each of these sort of limits the pool of suspects, because we would be looking for either a girl or a Svengali with "inside" knowledge of both.  Sort of like Konstantine Ukraintsev, only moreso.  Find that person, and I think you might well solve this thing.

Yes, and FS and Gleb Botkin fit those roles well.

The girl, and the Svengali with inside knowledge.

How can this possibly be discounted? While he wasn't the first to give her memories, it wasn't until after he met up with her that her claim and her court case went into high gear worldwide.

[Mgmstl]

Annie, she did NOT meet Gleb Botkin until WELL AFTER 1920, it was more around 1928, that she was involved with Botkin.  At least that is what Kurths book tells us.

[Denise]

Michael, Annie admits he wouldn't have been the first to give her memories, but she is right that it was at Gleb's instigation that she was able to get high powered legal representation.  I wonder if he subconsciously aided her, without realizing the info he was supplying?  You know how you can talk about a shared past with someone, taking it for granted that they know what you are talking about?  If he really felt she was the real AN (which we know he did), he may have done this in conversation, just assuming she would know what he was referring to.....

[Mgmstl]

Denise, I realize this, however Gleb didn't become involved until later, think about the people she encountered between 1920-1928, including Felix, the brother of FS.

What I am saying, is that Gleb didn't become a major player in this scandal until well after she had become known in Berlin.  I just want to keep the facts straight and clear in a timeline, so we don't get confused again.

[Denise]

Right!!  Great idea, actually, as we have a lot of new faces on the board....

[AGRBear]

In summation to the whole of the thread in terms of survivors, I keep coming back to this one line you have mentioned in your sharing Alixz, time and time again.

I also come to the bottom line of what you have termed that it was as an experience, horribly barbarous. It certainly stops all mental processes, in just thinking that any human being would be forced to go through such an unthinkable action, let alone survive any of it. I think they started here with the IF, and it continued as an act of defiance, and continued sentence as murder incorporated.

It is as you Alixz, have set into the only words I can think that can if possible define such actions as,

"brutality and desperation.  One of the best examples of "man's inhumaity to man".

I wonder even more, why that "brutality and insane desperation" continues. What on earth, in any man's heart and mind is so important, as to beat with wanton brutality, kill indiscriminately without conscience, justify such abherant actions, and in finality, prop up any government to say it is in the 'people's name'.

I've seen and gone through my share of the upmost extremes of violence, consoled countless victims of extreme violence and torture, whom also have ended up in terrible disabling issues, mentally and physically.

If AA was a con artist, then she was just as awful as those whom pulled the trigger by shooting the IF. It is a terrible inhuman thing to pull on any family or to extended family members.

There is nothing on earth so important, as to kill, maim, destroy, invalidate, any human heart, at any age, only so despots can control and continue to hold human beings hostage.

Your quite right Alixz, the emotional scars will, and do remain, forever. Recovery from such brutal onslaughts, are rare if ever.

I can't even begin to comprehend the horror they must have gone through, against the desperation of those whom believed they were saving Russia, by killing left and right, or offering AA in the end as a survivor, to tell her story...

Nothing of it makes any sense, to those whom are debating why someone would survive such horrific issues, as AA says she did.

But for those whom were staging the most brutal revolution, and ongoing scenerios, it had to be a lasting impression. So, thru their warped thinking, and crazed thoughts, I think this is where they, the revolutionists thought they could pull off the most brazen thrust of all. Remember, they were very desperate people, and had to make sure, that their actions produced the most trying and purposefilled acts of fear, and upset, so their needs could dominate with no ending.

Tatiana

Hello Alixz,

In America, we have a saying, 'there is no honor among theives'. That statement stays true where ever theives thrive...

The Soviet's were very, very, very, desperate people. They had to make sure at all cost, that they were first. History has proven that fact in many things they did...

They were crafty, anything but moral, and truth was far from their thoughts, their actions, their hearts. One of their greatest accomplishments was stealing the trust of their own citizens, so you know right there, it was not a country of safe haven. Countless emigrees have attested to that fact.

In offering a sound start of a government, they had not checks and balances, so if the people themselves were not part of the actual process of governing, then you know right there, tryanny was the Soviets choice of rule.

If you go into the files of esponage, you will find many skilled person's the communist used as decoys, whom took on the role of acting illogically, and so forth. How many heartaches did the KGB cost families across the world? How many did they take down in their own country? What we in the west, or any place else, might think as illogical, was not to the Soviets. They used anything, and anyone to gain what they wanted. They killed wantonly, without reason, and sometimes for reasons we will never understand.

To those who killed millions, causing unrest short and long term to one life, or to many countries, it was one of their many added skills. Remember, many of these agents took pride in causing extreme pain, and suffering.

How do you think the KGB got their start ? How many bodies did they bury, that we will never know ? They were in 'practice' over a wide country, and had many victims. They used children to the elderly to spy. Using this woman, was not out of the ordinary for the Soviets.

I don't think my thoughts are outlandish. Not to take them into consideration, would be overlooking the fact that the Soviets, were more than capable of doing, and completing such fiendish actions.

Tatiana  [Tania]

Dear Helen_A,

I used the words 'take into consideration', I did not say they, the soviets, did in effect take her on as a spy. That is not getting delusional. But that is as you say, only, in your opinion. I suppose on your website at yahoo, you will now have others whom at present visit or on the AP website, will make further slight remarks at my being an reactionary, etc. Your all entitled to your opinions, and we are certainly entitled with ours.

I have had friends both in the fbi, and the cia, who told me stories that would make your hair curl. There were stories of course they could not tell me, but they told me, nothing is or was considered out of this world, when one was dealing with the soviets.

So, while we may never know the full story, everything should be taken into consideration, till facts prove absolute truth. It's why we have these threads, to sift through every possible thought, situation, etc. I'm not attacking anyone, nor throwing words to be affrontive to you or anyone. I'm simply offering another way of addressing the subject. Why the inuendo of my being delusional?...

I wish you well, and most of all, peace of mind.  

Tatiana  

[AGRBear]

First let me say,  I hope angry elf is alright and has no more than a few bruises.

I cannot except the possibility of AA acting as any sort of spy...IT'S ILLOGICAL!!!
Who would tell any sort of anti-soviet counter revolutionary secret to a mentally unstable woman who became notorious for highly irrational behaviour including incidents in which she raved in a public department store of one hosts abuse/wandered about naked on the rooves of houses/occasionally ran away from rooms that she had locked [escaping thru' a window- I guess] leaving her worried "court" behind...  to later be discovered wandering - dirty and dishevelled - living off berries found in the local woods??
The various elements of any Russian anti soviet government abroad do not seem to have taken her at all seriously.
    If she was a plant then it was a very silly plant indeed - more like a shrub...


elf

If AA was a Soviet agent,  evidently,  they chose well since we're still discussing her even after all these years.

Don't you think that it's possible that a slightly crazy acting lady would be better for the part of GD Anastasia because it certainly was not expected that if anyone had suffered the lost of ten other people being killed around you would end up well balanced and show no effects.

Sorry Tania,  Helen's remarks were directed at my many "out of the box" speculaltions.  One of which I suggested that AA was incorporated into a German socialist revolutionary group who often frequented factorys where they knew disgruntled workers lived an breathed their hatred for the upper class "blood suckers".  If people knew their history, they would now that Berlin was a "hot bed" and frequently visited by everyone from Lenin to Felik Dzerzhinsky in those early years when they were forming a strong bond and establishing their agenda in Europe and Russia and hopefully the world.

I will return with URL's where this discussions has occured.

To me and by what I know and my own family has experienced,   it appears that Tania has a better grasp of reality about the Bolsheviki's true character who were not a nice sweet bunch of boys who's ambition were to be the modern "Robin Hoods" of Russia.

Felik Dzerzhinsky, the founder of the Soviet secret police, was very smart, crafty, and never dilusional about his power.  Unlike most of his underlings,  he  had been born in the Polish landed gentry and from a intelligentsia family.  From 1895 he was what we call a "professional" revolutionists.  He escaped his Siberian exile.  He knew Warsaw, St. Petersburg, Moscow and Siberian cities an towns and was placed in many of their prisions where he met his fellow revolutionaries who knew he was a rising "red" star.  He rose to power because he as good at that he did.  In fact, some think it was his brilliance that caused the Red Oct/Nov. Counter Revolution into a success for Lenin.  His success was because he attended everything down to the small details.  Dec. of 1917 he became chairman of the VECHEKA [Combating Counter-Revolution and Sabotage].  His agents stretched to every corner of Russia and into Europe and some think around the world.

If Dzerzhinsky thought GD Anastasia had escaped,  Dzerzhinsky would have been all over the problem like a wet blanket.  So,  please,  don't under estimate this man's abilities or his imagination.  And, don't think Tania's thought about AA being an agent as illogical and silly.

And,  if you think he didn't care about what was happening in the Romanov communities from Paris to China,  you are very wrong.  His special  organization known as the TRUST proves he was very much interested in all of their plans, plots and moves.

We don't have any evidence from the Russian archieves that tell us that AA was ever an agent so there is no proof.  However, there are hints that AA knew some top secret information which may have been given her by someone who fed her information.  I don't know enough about AA to be able to  pull out all of the information to prove the point that she knew secrets.  Perhaps others can.  But not here, of course.   The only one I've ever mentioned as the visit GD Anastasia's uncle Ernie's secret visit to Russia during WWI with a message from Kaiser Wilhelm II.

....[in part]...

AGRBear

[Denise]

Thanks for moving this over here.  I feel more confident discussing this in a "speculative" thread.

D (reading and waiting, as I mentioned before!  )