Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov

Anastasia Romanov, fondly known as Stana by her family, was born the 18th of June in 1901 (her birth date is also reported as 5 June 1901). She was the fourth grand duchess of Imperial Russia. All the country had been awaiting the birth of a boy, a Tsarevitch, and many people were disappointed at another girl. But the last grand duchess (though afterwards followed by her haemophiliac brother, Alexei) was a tomboy. Her father, Tsar Nicholas II, called her shvibzik, or "imp" in English. She often would daydream during lessons with her tutors, and though very bright, had no passion for schoolwork. She was more often seen climbing trees. Anastasia was fond of dogs, music, and painting. Her favourite book was The Millionaire Girl. It is believed she died at 17 years of age.

The bones of only one male, the Tsar and 5 females were found in 1991 in the Ural Mountains, along with a dog (presumably Anastasia's). This means Alexei is missing as well. But it is said the firing squad killed the cook too, therefore one female body is missing. Some believe it is neither Anastasia nor the cook. Some say it was Maria, Anastasia's older sister of two years. Did Anastasia really escape her family's cruel fate? One woman, Anna Anderson, claims she did. She, along with many others, claimed she was in fact the real Grand Duchess. However, that was disproved after the creation of DNA testing - the long-awaited Anastasia was really a Polish factory worker.


The Romanov Family Execution

The dreadful night of 16 July 1918, at midnight the chief executioner Yakov ("Dark Man”) Yurovsky, went upstairs to awaken the family. In his pocket he had a Colt pistol with a cartridge clip containing 7 bullets, and in his coat he carried a pistol and a clip of 10 bullets. When he went and knocked on the door Dr Bortkin, the family doctor was alert, he was already awake writing a letter which would turn out to be his last letter. Yurovsky explained his intrusion saying, “Because of unrest in the town, it has become necessary to move the family downstairs,” he said. “It would be dangerous to be in the upper rooms if there was shooting in the streets.” Botkin understood and went to awake the family and tell them to get dressed quickly. Nicholas 50, and Alexis 13, dressed in simple military shirts, trousers, boots, and cap. Alexandra 46, Olga 22, Tatiana 21, Marie 19 and Anastasia 17, put on simple dresses without outer wraps or ruffles. Nicholas was carrying his son Alexis, Alexandra was clutching a pillow as were the other daughters, and Anastasia was also holding her small King Charles spaniel, Jimmy. Following them were Trupp, Nicholas's valet; Demidova, the maid; and Kharitonov, the cook.

From there Yurovsky led all of them downstairs, to a bare room with no furniture. Alexandra seeing the empty room asked, “No chairs? May we not sit?” Yurovsky, went out to get 2 chairs, while one of the soldiers whispered to another “The empress needs a chair...evidently she wants to die in one.” Alexandra took one and put Alexis in the other. Then Yurovsky gave the “death directions”--“Please, you stand here, and you here...that's it in a row!”-- spreading them out across the back wall. He explained that he needed a photograph because people in Moscow were worried that they had escaped. When he finished aligning them, Yurovsky then called in not photographers, but 11 armed Bolshevik soldiers. Yurovsky stood in front of Nicholas, his right hand in his pocket and left holding a paper and read:

"In view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their attack on Soviet Russia, the Ural Executive Committee has decided to... execute you."

Nicholas quickly turned looked at his family and said “What? What?” Yurovsky jerked out the Colt out of his pocket and fired at the Tsar. Soon the entire squad began to fire at the family - each of the soldiers had been told beforehand whom they were assigned to shoot and ordered to aim for the heart to avoid excessive quantities of blood. The Empress and Olga each tried to make a sign of a cross as a prayer but they did not have time. Now Alexis and Tatiana, Marie and Anastasia remained alive. Bullets fired at the daughters' chest but they seemed to bounce off, (later Historians found out the daughters had sown jewels in their dresses to sell if ever they escaped their imprisonment) the executioners continued to fire, in the smoke, Marie and Anastasia pressed on the wall, while Alexis grasping for support was kicked in the head by a executioner. Then the executioners stabbed Alexis, Marie, and Anastasia - blood was everywhere.

Sheets from the beds were collected to drag out the bodies. When they picked up Anastasia's body and put her on a sheet she cried out. She was still alive. But then she got still and they continued, till they got to an abandoned place in the dense forest called the Four Brothers. There they undressed the family and collected their items and the jewels from the duchesses to resell them in a market. At some point in the carnage, perhaps in an attempt to make the corpses unrecognizable, the faces had been crushed by the blows from the rifle butts. While the diggers threw the bodies in the ditch, some of them actually touched the naked bodies of the duchesses. One of them said in an interview, quote: “I felt the Empress myself and she was warm” another one said “Now I can die in peace because I have squeezed the Empress's breasts.