The Death of the Dynasty
The Romanovs’ end was the product of the Red Army’s conspiracy after they won the civil war. But the war didn’t come out of nowhere. Workers, peasants and people in general wouldn’t stand the Empire’s decision to spend billions of rubles on two wars (Japan and Europe), while their own population was starving. We already know about the process and the outcome of the civil war so let’s talk about how the new government erased any possibility of the royal and noble peoples regaining power in Russia.
When he realised that he could no longer rule sufficiently and that he, himself, was partly responsible for the crisis and rise of revolution, Nicholas II abdicated in favor of Mikhail, his younger brother. Unfortunately for the Empire, Mikhail also didn’t trust himself, resigning the next day because he decided that the State had to be reformed with the people’s consent before it could be ruled. And that’s how 300 years of Romanov power came to an end. But the royal family knew that the revolutionary army would never accept this as the only thing won, and that there would be other attempts to reclaim the throne. So they tried to escape into exile but did not succeed. They got on a train to go to Tobolsk in August 1917, as advised by the provisional government of Alexander Kerensky, in an attempt to save themselves. Two months later the Bolsheviks had full control of the government.
The family, with 45 of their servants, were practically living imprisoned, eating what they could and wearing regular clothes. And were moved again, in May 1918 to Yekaterinburg, filled with fear of prosecution by trial every single day, waiting for the Czech Legion to come and rescue them. But it was a false hope. One night, commandant Yakov Yurovsky appeared with a group from the military, gathered the whole family in a small room “for their own safety”, took a picture of them, and told them they were sentenced to death by the Ural Soviet. Nicholas Romanov, his wife, Alexandra, their four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and his only son, 14-year-old sick Alexei, and four servants were shot dead.
In the year 2000, the members of the family were canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church. But this was not the only tribute. Investigations surrounding the various rumours and suspicions of their deaths’ arose and were eventually taken up by scientists and explorers after the fall of the Soviet Union, 25 five years ago. Mysteries abound in the case of the slain royal family, for instance, Trotsky’s letters and Yurovsky’s reports were found along with the remains of the family’s bodies, among many other treasures. These mysteries have brought all forms of speculation including artistic creation, like the secret story of Anastasia, the youngest daughter of Nicholas, who was believed to have survived to the shooting, and whose story was recreated in a Disney motion picture. Her remains, though, were found in 2007. To this day, there are still people claiming to be descendants of the survivors of the Romanovs relatives, and state that they have rights to the throne.
You can see our sources here:
http://www.angelfire.com/pa/ImperialRussian/news/martyrs.html
http://www.eyewitnesstohistory.com/nicholas.htm
http://content.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,133226,00.html
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/mainpage.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romanov_impostors
You might also be interested in this last-minute news about the Romanovs’ past:
https://www.rt.com/news/319835-russia-tsar-exhume-romanov/
And check out the last chapter of the documentary we showed you:
The Lost Dynasty
Three hundred years of family business. Nineteen Emperors and Empresses ruling with elegance, charisma, intrigue and might. Starting with Mikhail, ending with Mikhail. Building palaces and conquering vast lands. Succeeding one after another to govern hunger and cold with hidden gold and huge power, given by the glory of God and the Church. The legacy of the Romanov Dynasty started in mysterious ways and was ended by dark means in the midst of new worlds.
It started in 1613 when Mikhail I, a 16-year-old boy, was elected as Emperor of Russia by an assembly of boyars, a traditional noble class of the time. Mikhail was the son of Feodor Nikitich Romanov (later crowned as Patriarch Filaret), and the grandson of Roman Zakharin-Yuriev, from whom the name came to existence. Mikhail was elected after the death of Ivan IV, the Terrible, who had killed his own son when his wife, Anastasia, was assassinated by the boyars. And Ivan’s youngest son, Feodor, died childless. Thus his brother-in-law, Boris Godunov, was elected as Tsar in 1599 and did everything he could to keep the Romanovs away. This didn’t last long, because a wave of False Dmitriys, one after another, claiming to be Feodor’s children, took him down and restored the Dynasty.
After Mikhail, came his son Alexis I, in 1645, and his grandson Feodor III, in 1676. Feodor died without children, bringing rise to a new conflict between the descent of Alexis and Peter, and his stepbrother and sister Ivan and Sofia. We’re talking about Peter the Great, who started the importation of European influence and colonizing lands in Siberia. He founded the great city of St. Petersburg. (That’s where the name comes from.) He was the first one to call himself Tsar of all Russia. At his death in 1725, the boyars elected his wife, Catherine I, to succeed him, and after her came a few children, nephews and grandchildren who ruled in the new era of Russia continuing the tradition of fashion, magnificent palaces and powerful conquests. Until Catherine II, widow of one of the grandsons of Peter and Catherine I, conspicuously appeared in the throne in 1762. It is said that the nobles and the church forced him to abdicate in her favor.
A series of new conspiracies were formed in order to obtain the throne involving lots of murder. Alexander I, grandson of Catherine, and his brother Nicholas I, finally regained the power for the dynasty in 1825. And then a new Alexander and a new Nicholas came along. As the last one came to power, a whole new world was arising around the globe and Russia was not prepared. Just as Nicholas II was not prepared to be a Tsar. And was not prepared to fight two external wars and one internal civil war, of which we’ve learned already. In the end, all the members of the family were killed by the revolutionary army of the Bolsheviks. Mikhail, Nicholas’ brother, ruled for a few hours before he was banished and also executed, the finale of the Dynasty of the Romanovs, that had finally came to an end.
Visit our sources:
http://www.loc.gov/rr/rarebook/coll/214.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/House_of_Romanov
There’s also a great series of documentaries about the dynasty: