Speaker 1: Welcome to Stuff You Missed in History Class from how
Speaker 1: Stuff Works dot Com. Hello, and welcome to the podcast.
Speaker 1: I'm Katie Lambert and I'm Sarah Dowdy, and today we
Speaker 1: are granting listener requests fairy Godmother style. We've had a
Speaker 1: lot of requests for this particular subject, but here is
Speaker 1: a sample email from Lauren of Somerville, South Carolina, um
Speaker 1: who said that she had listened to our podcast on Resputin,
Speaker 1: but I've learned of the youngest roman off daughter, Anastasia
Speaker 1: and the mystery that surrounds her. In nineteen seventeen, when
Speaker 1: her family was murdered by the Bolsheviks. They never found
Speaker 1: Anastasia's body. Did she die or was she actually Anna Anderson,
Speaker 1: a German woman who claimed to be Anastasia for her
Speaker 1: whole life since the murder, So Kaddis and Josh did
Speaker 1: a podcast on Resputin, how did respute and really die?
Speaker 1: But Lauren's right, that doesn't solve all of the mysteries
Speaker 1: of the Roman family. So first let's get ourselves a
Speaker 1: cast of characters. So the family in question, the romanofs
Speaker 1: ruled the Russian Empire from sixteen thirteen to nineteen seventeen.
Speaker 1: But the guy we're talking about is Nicholas the Second,
Speaker 1: who succeeded Alexander the Third in eighteen ninety four, and
Speaker 1: he also married his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna that same year.
Speaker 1: Together they have five kids, Alexey, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia,
Speaker 1: who is perhaps the most famous today. Um Alexey is
Speaker 1: the baby, and he's the only son, and he's the
Speaker 1: heir um. But he's a hemophiliac, which is something that
Speaker 1: he inherited from his ancestress, Queen Victoria, so he's not
Speaker 1: the best air you could ask for, but the family
Speaker 1: is happy with their lot. When Olga was born, the
Speaker 1: Czar supposedly said, I am glad the child is a girl.
Speaker 1: Had it been a boy, who would have belonged to
Speaker 1: the people. Being a girl, she belongs to us, which
Speaker 1: reminded us a lot of Anne Boleyn and Henry the Eighth.
Speaker 1: It may be an apocryphal que to well the kind
Speaker 1: of thing more than likely, but it's the kind of
Speaker 1: thing it's fun to say. Definitely, they were pretty happy
Speaker 1: family all in all, but as rulers, not so much.
Speaker 1: In this book, History's Monsters by Simon sebag Montefiori. He
Speaker 1: called them inept, cruel, rigid, and obtuse reactionaries, which you
Speaker 1: know out Yeah, most people agree that Nicholas just wasn't
Speaker 1: very well suited to his position. He's a timid man,
Speaker 1: which means that he's easily manipulated and taken advantage of.
Speaker 1: And Alexandra actually has a lot of power over him,
Speaker 1: and he has favorites in court who have a lot
Speaker 1: of power over him. So this makes people uncomfortable, and
Speaker 1: he was really out of touch with his own people.
Speaker 1: He believed in divine right, he had God given power,
Speaker 1: so you know, he did what he wanted because he
Speaker 1: had God's blessing, and he listened to who he wanted,
Speaker 1: even if it wasn't maybe the best people, it wasn't
Speaker 1: the advisors, right, So he decided that anyone who disagreed
Speaker 1: with him wasn't an me with the capital E. And
Speaker 1: this does not breed happiness among his subjects. Yeah, Needless
Speaker 1: to say, Nicholas is very unpopular and his international relations
Speaker 1: are a mess. And this all brings us to the
Speaker 1: Russian Revolution of nineteen o five, which kind of gets
Speaker 1: this story started. So in January nineteen o five, the
Speaker 1: workers of St. Petersburg, which at the time was Petrograd,
Speaker 1: march to the Winter Palace with demands for Nicholas. They
Speaker 1: said that they were still loyal to the Czar, but
Speaker 1: that they wanted to elect a legislative assembly. So even
Speaker 1: these fairly moderate demands are not met well, and the
Speaker 1: Czar's troops fire on them, kill a hundred and thirty
Speaker 1: and it's called Bloody Sunday, and it ignites outrage in
Speaker 1: the Russian people. By October nineteen o five, there's a
Speaker 1: general strike. The cities are shutting down because they have
Speaker 1: no workers and Nicholas. Okay's a legislative assembly. But don't
Speaker 1: think the monarchy is giving up that easily. On their side,
Speaker 1: they have the Black Hundreds, who are counter revolutionaries and
Speaker 1: zarists who had access to a lot of arms. They
Speaker 1: were made mostly of the wealthier class and some clergymen,
Speaker 1: and they go after students and left wingers and um
Speaker 1: have bloody programs against the Jews, and they're really not
Speaker 1: fond of Ukrainians either. So this repressive regime is just
Speaker 1: getting worse, almost But the revolutionaries are just as violent.
Speaker 1: There's a military mutiny and several political assassinations. So you
Speaker 1: could sum up this whole period with the phrase violent unrest,
Speaker 1: and this continues for a long time. But with that,
Speaker 1: we'd like to explain. I guess why the Romanovs are
Speaker 1: so interesting. It's not because they're just part of these revolutions,
Speaker 1: kind of out of touch for standing against the revolution.
Speaker 1: It's because they're weird, really weird. They're kind of a
Speaker 1: freaky family. Alexandra Nicholas actually had a pretty happy marriage,
Speaker 1: but everyone else thought they were really bizarre. The Russians
Speaker 1: hated Alexandra because of her German nous. Not only did
Speaker 1: was she a German, she also was a haughty, cold
Speaker 1: kind of person, or at least that's how the people
Speaker 1: thought of her, and she epitomized what Russians didn't like
Speaker 1: in about German romists, and the First World War didn't help.
Speaker 1: She was accused of being a spy, and perhaps unsurprisingly,
Speaker 1: because the people didn't like her, she didn't really like
Speaker 1: them back and didn't make much of an effort. So
Speaker 1: the fact that their only son and heir has hemophilia
Speaker 1: doesn't really endear Alexandra to her people either. The Russians
Speaker 1: want a good strapping healthy air, and she has this
Speaker 1: invalid who she absolutely obsesses over, and she's of course
Speaker 1: blamed for it, and Alexander, whatever you say about her,
Speaker 1: she does kind of have a right to obsess over
Speaker 1: this disorder. Um. It's it's very serious and at the
Speaker 1: time it was incurable. It's a bleeding disorder where your
Speaker 1: blood doesn't clot and um. Some variations can be mild,
Speaker 1: but in the most serious cases you bleed internally and
Speaker 1: into your joints and um it's extremely painful. So her
Speaker 1: worries weren't unfounded. You know, this was a really serious
Speaker 1: thing for her son, but they kept his illness as secret,
Speaker 1: which probably made things seem very mysterious and very odd.
Speaker 1: People would just to wonder what was going on and
Speaker 1: also why this child was being coddled so much. So
Speaker 1: they were always looking for ways to cure him. And
Speaker 1: when medicine failed him, the mystic rest Sputant entered their lives,
Speaker 1: who supposedly could heal a little Alexei And we won't
Speaker 1: go into this story too much because of the other podcast,
Speaker 1: but resciput And had a lot of power over the
Speaker 1: romanofs and was a very strange and possibly evil man.
Speaker 1: He was murdered in nineteen sixteen after several attempts to
Speaker 1: kill him, but he wouldn't die much like a cartoon character.
Speaker 1: He keeps having that annvil fallen okay and surviving. So,
Speaker 1: just to add to this rather damning case against the
Speaker 1: Czar and his wife, people also think Nicholas set It
Speaker 1: was impotent, and Alexandra was a lesbian, and that she
Speaker 1: had had sex with rescput and to get her children.
Speaker 1: So there's just so much wrapped up around this couple,
Speaker 1: and also that all the daughters were having sex with
Speaker 1: Rescipued and people had no idea again what was really
Speaker 1: going on in that palace, But as far as outward
Speaker 1: appearances go, they thought something was entirely out of whack.
Speaker 1: So again, behind all of this, the revolutions are still happening.
Speaker 1: The Revolution of nineteen o five did not end in
Speaker 1: nineteen o five, and neither did that unwrast players change exactly.
Speaker 1: So then we have the Russian Revolution of nineteen seventeen
Speaker 1: and the government is very corrupt. Everyone hates the czar
Speaker 1: at this point, he's blamed for all the things he
Speaker 1: has done and the things he hasn't done. And it's
Speaker 1: also become very clear during the war that while the
Speaker 1: rest of Europe has been modernizing, Russia has not. That's
Speaker 1: something we talked about a little in our Crimean War episode.
Speaker 1: They were realizing that even then, because it's especially clear
Speaker 1: to the army, which is falling apart during warfare. There
Speaker 1: is also a food shortage, which is when the rioting started.
Speaker 1: And in this climate, Nicholas abdicated in March. His brother
Speaker 1: wouldn't take the throne. I wouldn't either if I had
Speaker 1: been his brother. And the romanofs are done. They have
Speaker 1: fallen completely out of power in the Russian Empire. So
Speaker 1: there's a power grab that happens. And to really simplify
Speaker 1: something that's quite complicated, the Bolsheviks and the left socialist
Speaker 1: revolutionaries are the winners, and the Bolsheviks promise peace, land
Speaker 1: and bread, which sounds like a pretty good deal. You
Speaker 1: can understargue with that, how people would get behind that.
Speaker 1: So back to our family. Nicholas of course abdicated after
Speaker 1: the February Revolution, which was part one of the Revolution
Speaker 1: of nineteen seventeen. So now what the families on house
Speaker 1: arrest for five months in Alexandra Palace, But in August
Speaker 1: nineteen seventeen they're sent to Tobolsk, Siberia, and the Bolsheviks
Speaker 1: have a fateful decision to make at this point exile
Speaker 1: the royal family or kill them. Killed the tsar and
Speaker 1: the family is a symbol, and because symbols are so important,
Speaker 1: you can see why this would be such a momentous decision.
Speaker 1: If you exile the family, they can always come back,
Speaker 1: you could have grandchildren come back, and it can go
Speaker 1: on for for centuries. So in April nineteen eighteen, they're
Speaker 1: still wavering on what to do, and they summoned Nicholas away.
Speaker 1: Alexandra and Maria go with him to eat Katerineburg and
Speaker 1: the yearls and the rest of the family doesn't join
Speaker 1: until May because Alexei was too sick to go before.
Speaker 1: And this is a big change for the royal family.
Speaker 1: There's not a lot of food, they're dressed in rags,
Speaker 1: they're not treated well. They're imprisoned in this house and
Speaker 1: don't have a lot to do. They spend a lot
Speaker 1: of time reading the Bible, and in July nineteen eighteen,
Speaker 1: a man named Yakov spared Love signs off on the
Speaker 1: killing of the Romanov family and um. At two o'clock
Speaker 1: in the morning, a group of men come for the Romanovs,
Speaker 1: and the family, along with a few of their servants
Speaker 1: whould remain loyal to them and their doctor, are taken
Speaker 1: into a small room and shot to death. And according
Speaker 1: to Robert Matthew's The Romanovs, the final chapter uh those
Speaker 1: who don't die in the first round of shots, which
Speaker 1: the girls are then bayoneted. Alexei is shot in the ear,
Speaker 1: Anastasia's made is bayonetted thirty times after she survives the
Speaker 1: gunshots and tries to escape, and the families also disfigured.
Speaker 1: They're hit in the face with rifle butts, and Anastasia's
Speaker 1: dog is even killed. So just this really violent assassination
Speaker 1: of the You have to picture this group, I think,
Speaker 1: what twelve executioners and then this family of nine in
Speaker 1: this teeny tiny room and all the blood. So, the bloody,
Speaker 1: disfigured to bodies were brought to a place called the
Speaker 1: Four Brothers, which was north vie Katerinburg and a place
Speaker 1: of swamps and pete bogs and minds. And when the
Speaker 1: bodies were stripped, the men found that the roman off
Speaker 1: daughters had diamonds sewn into their corsets, which explained why
Speaker 1: the bullets weren't killing them. The jewels redflicting them, something
Speaker 1: I remember learning about when I was a kid and
Speaker 1: just being fascinated by by this story. Always keep diamonds
Speaker 1: in your clothes. They're always the original kevlar. They were
Speaker 1: also wearing amulets with Rasputant's picture on them. Again, this
Speaker 1: is all according to Massey's book. And the bodies were
Speaker 1: thrown down a mine shaft with grenades thrown after them,
Speaker 1: and by July eighteen it was announced at a meeting
Speaker 1: where Lennon was present that Nicholas had been executed, but
Speaker 1: that Alexandra and the children were safe. And this it
Speaker 1: turns out to be alive because Lennon knew about the
Speaker 1: executions before they happened, knew about the executions of the
Speaker 1: whole family. Yes, this was kept up for a long
Speaker 1: time that Lennon had no idea what was going on,
Speaker 1: but it was all signed off on long before. So
Speaker 1: on the twentieth the papers announced the death of Nicholas,
Speaker 1: but again his family was reported to be alive. It
Speaker 1: wasn't until much later that the world found out that
Speaker 1: they were dead. So about a week after the executions,
Speaker 1: the counter revolutionaries the Whites uh capture a Katerine Burke
Speaker 1: and obviously search for the Romanovs. Can't find them, but
Speaker 1: they do find their blood, and by January nineteen nineteen
Speaker 1: a real search has been launched at four brothers by
Speaker 1: the Whites and they find little bits of jewelry, buckles, glasses,
Speaker 1: case of finger but no bodies. So where are they?
Speaker 1: And around the same time or shortly thereafter, they start
Speaker 1: to be rumors that some of the royal family has
Speaker 1: indeed escaped. A woman named Anna Anderson claims that she
Speaker 1: is Anastasia and she made it out alive, and there
Speaker 1: are several other Anastasia impostors that pop up over the years. Yeah,
Speaker 1: Anastasia somehow becomes the central figure of this story. But
Speaker 1: back to our question of the bodies. Word got out
Speaker 1: about where they'd been buried after they had been buried,
Speaker 1: so one of the executioners went and moved them, and
Speaker 1: they remained a secret for a very long time until
Speaker 1: someone found that same man's diary much later and pieced
Speaker 1: together where they might be. In n nine bodies were
Speaker 1: discovered in the area they were assumed to be Nicholas, Alexandra,
Speaker 1: three of the kids, their doctor, and three servants, which
Speaker 1: leaves us with two kids unaccounted for, who were assumed
Speaker 1: to be Alexey and Anastasia. And in it was confirmed
Speaker 1: with DNA evidence that those were the Romanovs, and so
Speaker 1: the Romano bones were buried in St. Petersburg, and there
Speaker 1: was a lot of controversy about this about the burial.
Speaker 1: The church objected to it because it didn't recognize that
Speaker 1: these were the Romanovs remains, and their names weren't said
Speaker 1: during the service, and a lot of people didn't buy
Speaker 1: the story that these were the Romanov bones, and um
Speaker 1: in two thousand four, another study came out in this group,
Speaker 1: also using DNA evidence, said that there was no way
Speaker 1: that these bodies could be the romanoff them right. They
Speaker 1: thought the DANNA evidence had been contaminated and so you
Speaker 1: couldn't say with any certainty that that's who they were.
Speaker 1: So we have our our story debunked. Just a little
Speaker 1: over a decade later, and in two thousand seven, two
Speaker 1: more bodies were found and these were positively identified as
Speaker 1: Alexei and one of the girls. The people who did
Speaker 1: the studies said it was virtually irrefutable evidence, and all
Speaker 1: these bodies, all these bodies, by the way, are found
Speaker 1: around the Four Brothers area. As a result of these studies,
Speaker 1: we basically have three camps. So the first one, all
Speaker 1: the Romanofs were killed and we found all of their remains.
Speaker 1: So the bodies the real deal and the two thousand
Speaker 1: seven bodies the real deal. Everything is completely buttoned up.
Speaker 1: The second camp, all the Romanoffs were killed, but we
Speaker 1: need more studies to find out if what we have
Speaker 1: is the real deal, and maybe we have some of
Speaker 1: the real bodies and we don't have others. Yes, I'm
Speaker 1: in the second camp for the record. And the third
Speaker 1: camp was that some of the Romanovs escaped and went
Speaker 1: on to live lives elsewhere. But the woman we mentioned before,
Speaker 1: Anna Anderson, who's the most famous Anastasia Impostor, really was
Speaker 1: an impostor. Mitochondrial DNA tests were done after her death
Speaker 1: and it doesn't match at all the Romanoffs. In nineteen
Speaker 1: seventy seven, the patty of house where the Romanovs spent
Speaker 1: their last days was demolished with a wrecking ball, and
Speaker 1: um Yeltsin actually did it under Brezhnev's orders, because it
Speaker 1: was still a place of pilgrimage. It was still a
Speaker 1: place where people went to, I guess celebrate the secretly manarchists.
Speaker 1: In two thousand, the Romanovs were named Holy passion bearers
Speaker 1: by the Russian Orthodox Church. And it's kind of like
Speaker 1: being martyrs. But martyrs are people who die for their faith,
Speaker 1: whereas passion bearers or people who still show great faith
Speaker 1: in the face of death, but are sort of interesting.
Speaker 1: Concluding point here, The big about faces that in two
Speaker 1: thousand and eight, the Russian Supreme Court ruled that the
Speaker 1: Romanovs were victims of political oppression. Um. Before that, I
Speaker 1: think people were focusing on the murders. It's just a
Speaker 1: random act, not a government directed act. So it was
Speaker 1: a big step to take resibility. Fascinated exactly in a
Speaker 1: distant descendant of the Romanovs. I think he was an
Speaker 1: ancestor of Nicholas the First actually told Newsweek here's a
Speaker 1: pretty long quote for you. There was a certain logic
Speaker 1: to the murders. From the Bolshevik point of view. Reaction
Speaker 1: to the revolution was still strong. They were being attacked
Speaker 1: from all sides, so destroying the czar a symbolic figurehead
Speaker 1: committed all those who participated in the revolution to an
Speaker 1: irreversible course. It's terrible to say it, but I understand
Speaker 1: their logic. It would have been too dangerous to leave
Speaker 1: the czar alive. But how they did it was a
Speaker 1: different matter. They murdered the family with the utmost barbarity,
Speaker 1: then tried to cover up the to the family and
Speaker 1: tried to pretend it was a local decision. It's set
Speaker 1: the tone for future secretive state terror. And that's the
Speaker 1: final word on the romanofs. But if you help some
Speaker 1: ideas on what you think happened to them, email us
Speaker 1: at History Podcast at how stuff works dot com. And
Speaker 1: if you'd like to learn more about their creepy mystic,
Speaker 1: you should check out an article how to rescue you
Speaker 1: can really die. But cat brings us to listener mail.
Speaker 1: So we have another comment for you on our Satchel
Speaker 1: Page episode. This is from Brian in New York and
Speaker 1: it was left on the blogs um. He wrote after
Speaker 1: we said that Satchell reportedly pitched at up to a
Speaker 1: hundred and five miles per hour. You're at a hundred
Speaker 1: and five miles per hour, the highest recorded speed in
Speaker 1: recent history is a hundred and four point eight, and
Speaker 1: that's in an era where pitchers take much better care
Speaker 1: of their arms. And even that one is widely acknowledged
Speaker 1: to be inflated, as it's one point eight miles prour
Speaker 1: higher than any other recorded pitch. The highest number I
Speaker 1: could find for page is one oh three, which is
Speaker 1: probably at or just beyond his actual one pitch and
Speaker 1: a lifetime top speed at which, given the circumstances under
Speaker 1: which he was playing, is certainly so stupefying ly impressive
Speaker 1: that it doesn't need embellishment. I wouldn't believe that if
Speaker 1: someone told me caulled Bunny in through one oh five.
Speaker 1: So we thought that was pretty funny. So thank you
Speaker 1: for the clarification, Brian. If anyone else has anything to
Speaker 1: say about it, feel free to email us. We're also
Speaker 1: on Twitter if you'd like to follow us at missed
Speaker 1: in History and again, you should check out rs Scute
Speaker 1: and article on our homepage at www dot how stuff
Speaker 1: works dot com for more on this and thousands of
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Speaker 1: be sure to check out this stuff you Missed in
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Speaker 1: home page,