KZN’s Russian royal link?
One hundred years ago on July 17, Russia’s Imperial Family were brutally executed. Catherine and Michael Greenham describe that horrific time and ask the question: Did they all die or did one possibly make it to South Africa?
IN THE early hours of July 17, 1918, Nicholas Romanov was awakened and, along with his family and four aides, taken to the basement after they had dressed. No longer the tsar, Nicholas stood with his wife, his 12-yearold son and four young daughters before Yakov Yurovsky, the leader of the Bolshevik detachment of 12 guards.
As if announcing the day’s activities, Yurovsky made the statement that the Ural (local) executive committee had decreed that they were to be shot as enemies of the state.
In shock and disbelief, Nicholas turned his back on the detachment, his face toward his family, then, as though collecting himself, turned to the leader with the question: “What? What?”
“This is what I mean!” cried Yurovsky, firing point-blank at Nicholas with his automatic revolver, killing him instantly. Then the shooting began, each guard selecting his own target, the room filling with smoke as screams, shots and the groans of the dying reverberated around the basement.
Alexei, the young son, was not killed outright, but moaned and writhed over the bodies of his dead parents. Yurovsky callously pumped round after round into his head.
Three of the girls were breathing and they were bayoneted to death. The floor was chipped and torn with bayonet thrusts driven through the soft bodies.
A little dog named Jimmy, a King Charles spaniel and pet of the once Grand Duchess Anastasia, ran hysterically about, darting between the legs of friend and foe, barking furiously. Floor and walls were spattered with blood and bits of clinging flesh. Scattered around the room were the corpses of the Imperial Family, lying in ever-widening pools of red, royal blood. It was not blue, as it turned out, but red like everyone else’s.
It was the end of the 300year reign of the Romanovs. The Bolsheviks had taken over under their leader, Vladimir Lenin. In all likelihood, it was he who had ordered the grotesque executions following on the success of the revolution that gripped Russia in 1917.
Forces loyal to the tsar, The Whites, had been getting too close for comfort to Yekaterinburg, where the tsar and his family had been held captive. Lenin did not want to take any chances.
Tsar Nicholas ll had been a good family man, of that there is no doubt. He sat with his children when they were ill and valued pictures they made for him. People found him extremely affable and kindly.
Although lauded for his personal qualities, as an absolute autocrat, Nicholas had been a failure. He found it impossible to reconcile his own views on right and wrong to the needs of a 20th-century Russia.
Demonstrations and uprisings had been harshly dealt with especially the “Bloody Sunday” demonstration in St Petersburg in 1905 which led to the massacre of hundreds of working-class Russians when the Imperial Guard opened fire on demonstrators.
This was followed by a cavalry charge. Horses trampled people and sabres were used to hack others to death.
Perhaps the biggest problem was the distribution of wealth issue in a society with a chasm between the few who were fabulously rich and the many who were dirt poor.
The tsar was an intelligent man but lacked political savvy. He could be indecisive, vacillating on important issues. This made him come across as weak and contradictory to his ministers, who found it difficult to read his true thoughts and follow his leadership.
There were also questions surrounding his wife, who had not been seen as suitable from the start. She might have been the granddaughter of Great Britain’s Queen Victoria, but she was very German and Russia, along with half of Europe, had been at war with Germany since 1914. There were concerns at all social levels in Russia that she unduly influenced her husband’s decisions, indeed, she might even be a spy.
If this was not bad enough, there was another and perhaps even bigger question, that of her relationship with Grigori Rasputin, the mystic and holy man whom the tsarina believed was the only one who could heal her haemophiliac son, the Tsarevich Alexei.
With her husband away at the front during World War I the influence exerted by Rasputin and the tsarina reached its height.
Seen as a religious charlatan and opportunist whose sexual exploits were legendary, it was only a matter of time before a physical relationship with the tsarina was brought into question.
There is no evidence to support this, no smoking gun, but rumours persisted then as now. The pop group Boney M’s chart topping Ra-Ra- Rasputin, (lover of the Russian queen) echoes this today.
In the revolution that followed in 1917, the Bolsheviks (a Marxist political party), rose to power under Vladimir Lenin and the tsar was forced to abdicate.
He and his family were imprisoned in various places, their final destination being the two-storey Ipatiev House in the town of Yekaterinburg where they were shot by Yurovsky’s men.
Things had not gone to plan. For some reason bullets had bounced off some of the victims and ricocheted around the room. When they had tried to finish off the daughters with bayonets, they could not pierce the corsets.
It was only later, after the bodies had been moved by truck to a forest nearby, that the reason became apparent.
When the guards were stripping their bodies, they noticed diamonds dropping out of the holes in their corsets, effectively turning them into bulletproof vests. The Imperial Family had gone to great lengths to conceal what wealth they could.
After several abortive attempts to dispose of the bodies, Yurovsky and his detachment finally decided to burn them.
In his account he states: “We piled the corpses in the pit, poured sulphuric acid onto their faces and generally over their whole bodies to prevent them from being recognised and from stinking as a result of decomposition (the pit was not deep).
“Having thrown dirt and brushwood on top, we put down railroad ties and drove over them a few times – no traces of the pit were left. The secret was completely safe; the Whites didn’t find this burial place”.
Only Alexei’s spaniel, Joy, survived to be rescued by a British officer of the Allied Intervention Force in that same year. She lived out a rather pleasant life in Windsor, Berkshire.
In 1977, Boris Yeltsin gave an order to destroy the Ipatiev House. It had become a shrine for pilgrims. For years thereafter, the only evidence of its existence was a white cross but, in 2003, the Church of All Saints was built there and marks the place where the Romanovs were killed.
Russia remained in the grip of communism for generations. The bodies of the Romanovs remained in their shallow graves undisturbed until 1979 when they were found by a Russian mystery writer, Geli Ryabov, and a geophysicist from Yekaterinburg, Dr Avdonin. They waited for the collapse of communism before they revealed their find.
Eighty years after their execution, the bodies were finally laid to rest with state honours in the St Catherine Chapel of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg where most other Russian monarchs since Peter the Great lie.
Boris Yeltsin, the past president of Russia, and his wife attended the funeral along with Romanov relations, including Prince Michael of Kent.
On August 15, 2000, the Russian Orthodox Church announced the canonisation of all seven of the Romanovs. On October 1, 2008, the Supreme Court of the Russian Federation ruled that Nicholas II and his family were victims of political repression and rehabilitated their names.
Since the deaths of the Romanovs, a number of people have come forward claiming to be survivors. One by one they have proved to be imposters.
The most famous was Anna Anderson, who claimed to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia. After years of intrigue, DNA testing proved her to be Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish factory worker with a history of mental illness.
However, in Verulam, just outside Durban, a woman known as Granny Alina was the foster grandmother of Gabriel Louis Duval, who claimed in his 2004 book, A Princess in the Family, that she might have been Grand Duchess Anastasia. According to Duval, Granny Alina married a man named Frank and moved to South Africa where they started a farrier business. After Frank’s death, she lived with Duval’s family from 1954 until her death in 1969.
“There was no electricity in the evenings after dinner, so the family would gather around the kerosene lamp. Everyone would be in good spirits and Granny Alina would sing Russian lullabies and folk songs while we kept time by clapping. Sometimes she would tell us stories of her past and that is when I found out that she had been a princess in Russia.
“She told us that the rest of her family had been murdered and that she was the only survivor.”
Duvall eventually got permission to exhume her remains from her grave in Empangeni and take them to Perth, where he was living at the time. Monash University, however, was unable to extract any DNA from the bones because of their condition.
The bones were subsequently removed to the UK for testing. The University of Manchester, using forensic facial reconstruction, proved that Granny Alina was not Anastasia. It looked like the end of the road for Duvall’s quest but, amazingly, the tests proved a match with the Grand Duchess Maria instead.
But this was not conclusive proof. A DNA match was required. Further DNA tests were done in the UK but, unfortunately, contamination made a definite conclusion impossible. An Australian documentary was made of this and can be seen on YouTube, In Search of a Lost Princess. It has 1.3 million views so far and is a fascinating account of the efforts made to solve the puzzle.
Duval was convinced that Granny Alina and Maria Romanov were one and the same. She would become terrified and hide in her room whenever strangers, especially police, came near her home. She also knew precise details of the Romanov massacre and the trip in the truck to the forest where she was rescued.
Intriguingly, she spoke about this decades before the information was made public.
A century later, these brutal and inhumane executions still shake the foundations of our understanding of civilisation. No matter how politically pragmatic they might have been, what did it have to say about the Russia to come?
Tsarist autocracy might have been over but, like many revolutions, some problems are solved and others, possibly even more fearful, are created.
Catherine Greenham is a teacher and published author of the novel,
Rebellion. Michael Greenham is a chartered accountant and lecturer. Together they have a great interest in history, particularly Durban history. They have a large collection of books on history and English literature as well as old Durban postcards which they use to illustrate their articles.