THE most enduring and romantic legend of the Russian Revolution — that two children of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, Alexandra, survived the slaughter that killed the rest of their family — may finally be put to rest with the positive identification of bone fragments from a lonely Russian grave.
The czar and his family were gunned down and stabbed by members of the Red Guard early on the morning of July 17, 1918, but persistent rumours have maintained that two of the children, the Grand Duchess Anastasia and her brother Alexi, survived, perhaps because the diamonds sewn into their clothes blocked attempts to kill them.
Those hopes were bolstered with the 1991 revelation that nine bodies of Romanov family members and servants had been found in a Yekaterinberg grave, but that a son and daughter were still missing.
Now, newly analysed DNA evidence from a second, nearby grave discovered in 2007 proves that the bones are from the final two children, ending the mystery once and for all. A report on the analysis was published online on Tuesday in the journal PLoS One.
“I think it is very compelling evidence that this family has been reunited finally”, said geneticist Terry Melton of Mitotyping Technologies in State College, Panama, an expert in forensic DNA. Melton, who was not involved in the new research, played a major role in disproving the claims of the late Anna Anderson that she was Anastasia, a claim that received a great deal of attention. Melton says she still receives several calls each year from people claiming to be direct descendants of the Romanovs.
“There is absolutely no doubt that these are the remains of the Romanov family”, said Peter Sarandinaki, founder of the Scientific Expedition to Account for the Romanov Children Foundation, which has been seeking the remains of the family.
“The scientific results are, without a doubt, conclusive”, said Sarandinaki, the great-grandson of the White Army general who attempted to rescue the Romanovs before their deaths. Nicholas abdicated the throne in March 1917, ending the 304-year Romanov rule, and the family was banished to Siberia. The following year, the family, their doctor and three servants were executed by the Ural Red Guard on the orders of Vladimir Lenin, and their bodies were disposed of.
Russian film director Gely Ryabov, an amateur archaeologist, found the remains of nine bodies in an unmarked grave near Yekaterinberg in the early 1970s but kept the discovery secret until 1991, after the fall of the Soviet Union.
DNA testing in the 1990s by geneticist Peter Gill of the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland, indicated that the remains were of the czar and czarina and three of their daughters. For comparison samples, researchers used DNA from Britain’s Prince Philip, whose grandmother and the czarina’s grandmother were sisters, and from non-direct descendants of the royal family.
Two years ago, archaeologists found a second grave about 70 yards from the first. It contained 44 broken and burned bone fragments, consistent with reports that the Red Guard tried to burn the remains of two children before burying them.
Russian authorities enlisted the help of geneticist Michael Coble of the Armed Forces DNA Identification Laboratory in Rockville, Maryland, the world’s largest mitochondrial DNA testing facility, specialising in identifying the remains of US soldiers. Coble is the lead author of a report on the findings.
Preliminary analysis suggested that the fragments were from two people, a female and a male. Coble and geneticist Anthony Falsetti extracted DNA and compared it with DNA from the bones found earlier and to DNA from a leg bone of Nicholas’ brother Georgij, who died of tuberculosis as a young man.
Using technology that allowed use of extremely small samples, they were also able to match the DNA from all the Romanov family members to DNA from a blood-stained shirt that had been worn by the Csarevich Nicholas Romanov on 1891, when he was attacked by a Japanese policeman while touring the city of Otsu. The bloody shirt was returned to Russia and preserved.
“This closes the book on this particular chapter of the Romanov history”, said forensic anthropologist Susan Myster of Hamline University in St Paul, Minnesota.
“There are still people who are going to want to believe that there were survivors, and God bless them, but I am confident that the royal family has been found, they have been identified and there was no escape, no princess,” Falsetti said.
But the story is not quite over yet.
The nine bodies were buried in Russia but not as royalty. In May, Sarandinaki and Coble will present the new results to officials of the Russian Orthodox Church.
“Hopefully, we will be able to convince the church about our findings and at the end, the church will agree and finally give the family the decent and honourable burial they deserve,” Sarandinaki said.
© The Washington Post