Did any of the Romanovs survive?

[rskkiya]

Good point AGRbear,

I guess that at the moment, I am inclined to accept the DNA results and Dr Maple's statements regarding the execution. Surely he's not a Cheka agent!!!  

[rskkiya]

One other question...
  Wasn't there a woman fron Ohio who claimed to be Anastasia ...I don't remember her name but supposedly she met up with a Polish ex-spy who claimed to be Alexie ( I really did read this -  although, I admit-  it does sound like some silly soap opera plot   ) Eventually their mutual "escape stories" sort of cancelled each other out... and they parted ways... Does anyone know anything about this Anastasia claimant?  
So sorry if this is part of another thread...

[Greg_King]

I read this quote recently in an article titled: "The Mystery of the Romanov Bones" from a Vanity Fair issue dated from 1993. Does anyone think that the possibility of one of the daughters escaping was possible, based on this quote?

The actual quote is from the statement by Alexander Strekotin, a member of the guard (not a shooter) who observed this.  Strekotin's statement remained concealed in the Party Provincial Archives in Sverdlovsk until 1990, whereas stories of survival began to circulate within weeks of the murder.

Greg King

[Greg_King]

Twenty minutes is a long time to be shooting in a basement room.  

It was actually about ten minutes, from all of the available information.

How many claimed to be shooters?  With Rifles?  Hand guns? Shotguns?

Were there any bullets among the bones?

Did any of the shooters suffer wounds from bullets glancing off the walls?

AGRBear

To answer the above very briefly (we went into great detail in "Fate of the Romanovs" and in the special issue of "Atlantis" about these aspects):

1.  There were ten men shooting that night.
2.  Fourteen guns were used that night-all pistols and revolvers; between them they held 103 shots.
3.  13 bullets were recovered from the murder room; two from the area surrounding the Four Brothers Mine in 1918, along with an empty casing; in 1991 during the exhumations of the mass grave in Koptyaki Forest a further 25 bullets were recovered.  In 1998 Peter Sarandinaki found one Nagant bullet half concealed in the clay and overgrowth surrounding the abandoned mine.
4.  Several of those shooting either suffered powder burns (owing to the close proximity of the shooters) and possibly the effects of ricochets that may (the evidence conflicts) have caused some physical injury.  The majority of the bullets fired remained in the bodies.

Greg King

[Greg_King]

Good point AGRbear,

I guess that at the moment, I am inclined to accept the DNA results and Dr Maple's statements regarding the execution. Surely he's not a Cheka agent!!!  

The problem, obviously, is that Maples wasn't there.  He made the statement that based on his experience, no one left that room alive, both in public and to me.  And yet we know that both Marie and Anastasia were alive when they were removed from the room and taken to the truck-they had to be "finished off" with bayonets.  Neither had been shot in the head and killed, despite claims otherwise.

I liked Bill Maples a lot-he was always a straight-shooter-but clearly some of what he said and believed to be true in this case (like his accounting of the confusion over the appearance of the bodies and the mix-up with Demidova or Alexandra versus Anastasia being explained as decomposition and maggot infestation-a charge refuted by Professor Neil Haskell, the world's only full-time forensic entomologist) can be shown not to have been the case.

Greg King

[rskkiya]

Mr. King,

How do we " know" that Marie and Anastasia were both alive when removed from the basement? Who told us that ? Bolshevics?  So many people here refuse to believe anything else that these people say...so ought anyone accept that statement as fact?  
I don't mean to seem rude  - no doubt you know a great deal more about this than I ever could.  Dr. Maple's condemnation of the idea of "kind hearted murderers" made a great deal of sense, at least to me. I do hope that I haven't  taxed your patience ! Thanks for your kind response.  

[rskkiya]

Penny,

Thank you for your clarifications - you're very kind, polite and above all patient!  

[_Rodger_]

It's not a question of 'All Bolsheviks lie all the time.' That's an obvious mischaracterization, and is not at all entailed by my prior commentary.

A better, more logical characterization would be 'of the set of comments made by bolsheviks regarding this matter, which is, or are true and which is, or are false?'

The problem is the fact set from which conclusions regarding the truthfullness of contemporary accounts have been, and are presently being drawn from, is elastic when by all rights it should be static.  This result presents per se prima facie evidence of the unreliability of contemporaneous partisan accounts.  

[Belochka]

Under the circumstances the accounts made by Bykov and others are the only real primary sources we have to rely on. The issue of veracity is subject to scrutiny after the fact.

The investigations which followed under Sokolov (who was working for Kolchak's Siberian White Army) also compounded the problem of ascertaining what actually happened. There were errors of judgement made by him as well.

Facts can be embellished, misinterpreted or simply ignored, however it would be wrong to claim that everything the Bolsheviks wrote down at the time would not have some credibility.

One of the problems the Soviets had with covering up information is that uncertainties and/or distortions gave rise to rumors which became perpetuated as myths which persist today.

[AGRBear]

CHEKA Claims are:

According to Edvard Radzinsky's book, The Last Tsar, p. 341-2;
The shooters were and who was listed as their target:
1. Commandant Yakov Yurovsky - Tsaritsa
2. Peter Ermakov - Tsar
3. Nikulin Alexei - Marie
4. Mikhail Medvedev (Kudrin) - Tsar's daughter [not named]
5. Pavel Medvedev - daughter  [not named]
6-11. Latvians from the CHEKA - finished off the others

Photographs following page 366:

"Part of the assasination squad:  Nikolai Tolmachev, Alexander
Belborodov, Gregory Safarow and Filipp Goloshchekin"

According to Noble Frankland's book Imperial Tragedy he wrote p.  163 that Yourovsky executed the Tsar, who died instantly, then he shot Alexis...  Didn't die immediately and he was shot again...  "The other men, some of them wildly, shot at the other prisioners."

Edvard Radzinsky wrote about Yurovsky and Ermakov both claiming to have shot the Tsar.

Robert Massie in his book The Romanovs, The Final  Chapter:
pps. 4-6:

Massie's remarks about the shooters were:  "Five, like Yurovsky, were Russians, six were Latvains.  Earlier,
two Latvians had refused to shoot the young women and Yurovsky had replaced them with two others."  He went on to say that Yourovsky with a Colt shot the Tsar...   Then Massie went on to say the others, each who had been appointed whom to shot, started shooting....  There is the claim all died in the basement room.

So, according to most who write about the night of 16/17 July 1918 there were eleven shooters?

Corrections?  Additions?

AGRBear

[IlyaBorisovich]

Penny, was there any indication as to why Yurovsky chose to run the execution this way?  I mean, the much more simple and humane way to go about it would be the "nine grams to the back of the head," as, I thought, was the rule in the CHEKA.  It would seem they were asking for trouble with the haphazard way they went about it.  It just puzzles me why they couldn't have forseen the CF that ensued.  Were they that naive, or inexperienced?  It would make sense that the Ural Soviet, or Lenin (whoever ordered the murder, I don't know this off the top of my head) would want their most efficient people on this so there wouldn't be any mishaps.  The whole thing seems pretty slipshod for the political significance of the act, but maybe this is the basis of Rodger's argument.  None of it makes any sense.

Ilya

[Greg_King]

AGRBear-

I can't quote and answer for reasons of length, so will clip the quote when finished-hopefully it doesn't mess up the format.

I'm not quite sure what you mean by "Cheka claims."  The Cheka never made any claims.  What we have are the statements of guards who heard about the shooting, or witnessed it, and the statements of those who participated (of whom only 3 were in the Cheka).

One problem is simply taking published works and what they say-for example, both Radzinsky and Massie either didn't know about or have access to Yurovsky's 1922 memoir and Victor Netrebin's statement, or the complete text of Kudrin's statement, and those of Isai Rodzinsky and Alexander Strekotin.  What we did was return to original primary accounts to determine the number of shooters and who they were.  I'm confident that they were 10-we lay out all the details, previously published versions, and arguments in "Fate of the Romanovs."

Radzinsky's photo of Beloborodov, Goloshchokin, et al., does NOT reflect a picture of ANY of those who shot that night.  The shooters were: Yurovsky; Kudrin; Nikulin; Ermakov; Medvedev; Soames; Netrebin; the two Kabanov brothers; and Lacher.  Of them, Yurovsky, Kudrin, Nikulin, Ermakov, Medvedev, and Netrebin were all ethnic Great Russians; Soames and the two Kabanovs were Balts; Lacher was an Austrian, and the only foreign shooter.

My point is: it's important not to turn to what Radzinsky said, or Massie said, but to what the original statements and memoirs say.  We may be at variance with "accepted" thought on the number and ID of the shooters, but we do so based firmly on the eyewitness accounts and statements, many previously unavailable to other historians.

Greg King

[Robert_Hall]

rskkiya
I think you are referring to Eugenia Smith, who came out with a "bio" in 1963 [volI, there never was another vol.]
She had a "reunion" with Golienewski [sic] the Polish/CIA agent who seemed to have several reunions with his siblings, all eventually denouncing the others as frauds.
One of the big US photo mags did a big spread on them at the time [LIFE,POST ?] and they quickly faded from their spotlight. I know the spy fellow died, having chaged his name to Romanov. Do not know whatever happened to Eugenia, but she is undoubetly dead by now as well.
Cheers,
Robert
p.s. please note that I said "I THINK' this is the case. I have their books here somewhere, but am going by memory.
RH

[rskkiya]

Mr. Hall ,

Thanks so much for your information about Ms. Smith & Mr G. I was simply being lazy and I ought to have looked it up myself, but luckily you saved me the effort. Ta!

Enjoy your summer holday!

[Antonio_P.Caballer]

Hello Penny,

I´ve read that during the days following the murder there were warnings(?) from the bolsheviks , informing that a grand duchess had escaped and that there were many shootings in the city and searchings in hospitals looking for her.

Do you know anything else about this subject???

Thanks!