Swindlers on guard of the monarchy: Who really were the false Romanovs, who claimed that they had escaped from execution

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

In 1918, the Bolsheviks passed a sentence to the royal family without trial or investigation. The Romanovs were shot at dawn on July 17, finished off with bayonets, the remains were doused with sulfuric acid and buried. This brutal murder soon began to grow overgrown with rumors and legends, which were composed by swindlers who tried to prove their involvement in the imperial family. Almost all the pseudo-Romanovs were convinced that they miraculously managed to escape from execution in the house of the engineer Ipatiev, where one of the most monstrous atrocities in the history of Russia took place.

Tsarevich Alexey

Some time after the execution of the royal family, a certain one appeared before Admiral Kolchak and told him that when the train, in which the Romanovs were taken into exile, was sent to him, the heir to the throne, people sympathizing with the king had organized an escape. They also helped Alexei hide for several months. But the swindler was immediately exposed, since one of the Tsarevich's teachers was alive, and brought the impostor to clean water.

For a long time, a certain person convinced those around him of his “royal origin”. He even recounted details from his palace life. In the end, he was admitted to a psychiatric hospital, where the rest of the Napoleons and Macedonians were kept.

The Estonian put forward the following version of his salvation. Yurovsky, who headed the group of reprisals against the royal family, used blank cartridges to shoot at him, the son of the king. Then, while transporting the bodies to the burial site, Alexei fled and was handed over to the family of distant relatives of the king's courtiers who lived in Estonia.

Having reached the age of majority, he left for Canada. Currently, his heirs continue to claim the Romanov surname and the royal crown.

Nikolay Dalsky, proving that he is Alexei Romanov, argued that, under the guise of an assistant to the tsarist cook, the guards, sympathetic to the monarchists, had taken him out of the imprisonment of the monarch's family to the city of Suzdal, to the family of some Dalskys, whose son, the same age as the Tsarevich, had died at that time. There, the “heir to the throne” was allegedly cured of hemophilia. He later became a Red Army officer.

In total, at different times there were 81 impostors who pretended to be Tsarevich Alexei.

Princess Mary

When Alina Karamidas, who lived in South America, lived to her venerable age, her family heard that she began to speak Russian. The linguist translated the following. She claimed that she was born in Russia and was the princess Romanova, who had escaped from execution in her time. For a long time, the children and grandchildren were looking for proof of the words of Alina's grandmother, but in vain.

In early 1919, a girl with a regal bearing and secular manners appeared in a Polish village. Her name was Averis Yakovelli. Rumors began to appear around that this miraculously survived Maria Nikolaevna Romanova. The girl did not comment on these statements in any way. She lived quietly and closed. However, after her death, diaries were found, entries in which showed an identity with the princess.

The contender for the title of the Russian princess Maria Marty openly stated that she was nee Maria Romanova. Her children still point to the identity of the handwritings of their mother and the Grand Duchess of Russia. They even opened a page on the Internet, where they gathered many supporters of their version.

Anastasia

The most talked about person from the Romanov dynasty. It is she who is credited with accidentally saving from the Ural dungeons, and the number of impostors in this case is colossal.

One of the Anastasias was a certain Anna Anderson, her real name was Francisca. When she was admitted to a Berlin psychiatric hospital, in her delirium she called herself Princess Romanova. One of the nurses saw a striking resemblance between the girl and the favorite of Nicholas II. Russian émigrés readily supported this myth, and for twenty years the impostor tried to prove her royal origin through the courts. She accurately told about the situation in the palace, the servants, household items and various little things, confirming her version. Anderson's supporters still consider her the only surviving person from the imperial family.

Nadezhda Ivanova-Vasilyeva, being in a psychiatric hospital in the city of Kazan, said that she had escaped from the Ipatievs' house by seducing a security officer. Proving her involvement in the royal family, she went on a hunger strike. Later she was sentenced to death by the NKVD for conducting underground monarchist activities.

Eugenia Smith, a famous American artist, author of the book "Anastasia", which is supposedly the autobiography of the Grand Duchess. Smith fantasized so enthusiastically that she herself believed in the authenticity of what happened to her in her youth. Which, in fact, is very characteristic of creative natures. But the impostor did not pass the polygraph test.

Tatiana

In the 1920s, a lady came to France from Siberia, claiming that she was Tatyana Romanova. Outwardly, she really looked very much like a princess. She promised to tell the circumstances of her escape only in the presence of her grandmother, Empress Maria Feodorovna. Before the meeting, the woman died under unexplained circumstances. Her name was Michel Anchet. The passport turned out to be fake during the check. The circumstances of her death were classified, but the mass media in the West trumpeted that the punishing sword of the Bolsheviks reached the only daughter of Nicholas II who escaped execution.

Margot Lindsay is known as a dancer in Constantinople. After the end of the Russian Civil War, she arrived in London and married a military man. Margaret did not discuss her past with anyone, even with her husband, but her enormous fortune and resemblance to Tatyana Nikolaevna gave rise to certain rumors.

However, the woman did not refute them, nor did she declare herself the heiress of the Romanovs.

Olga

The most famous and successful of all the scammers who called themselves Olga Nikolaevna Romanova was, perhaps, Marga Bodts. At the beginning of World War II, she settled in France, playing the role of the daughter of the murdered Russian emperor, who miraculously escaped being shot and impoverished. For a long time, the Romanov impostor collected significant sums from gullible and sympathetic citizens. Such charity provided Marga with a far from poor existence and some privileges in Parisian society. Her fraud was uncovered and the swindler was brought to justice.

After serving her sentence, she managed in some amazing way to convince Crown Prince Wilhelm and other high-ranking persons of the Romanov tree, who until the end of her life Boodts provided her with a solid pension and presented a luxury villa in Italy, of the veracity of her version.

Recalling the events of that terrible night in the Ipatievs' house, Marga said that a simple peasant woman saved her, replacing her with an orphan girl, who did not even suspect that in a few hours she would be shot. False Olga claimed that, except for herself, none of the royal family was able to escape.

In the early 90s of the last century, Russian criminologists carried out the reconstruction of the faces of the royal family from the skulls found in the alleged place of their burial. And many previously classified materials on the case of the royal family remain very contradictory. But still, in this bitter story there are many dark spots that make one think: were all the false Romanovs swindlers?..

Of great interest today are letters of Alexandra Feodorovna to Nicholas II, published abroad in 1922. These lines speak for themselves about the degree of depth and sincerity of feelings.