Anatol Shmelev, the Robert Conquest Curator for Russia, Ukraine, and Eurasia at the Hoover Institution Library & Archives, recounts the tragic end of the Romanov family—Nicholas and Alexandra and their five children—after the tsar abdicated the throne in 1917. Shmelev describes the family’s final months before their brutal murder as documented in letters the grand duchesses sent to a childhood friend.
Finding Aids for Featured Collections: Zborovskii Family Papers here.
Herman Axelbank Motion Picture Film Collection here.
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>> Anatol Shmelev: Observing the Romanov family members in photographs and films and through their letters and diaries makes their violent end all the more dramatic. It humanizes their story, brings their final chapter vividly to life.
The strain on Russia's economy caused by the First World War resulted in food shortages in the cities, which led to strikes in the factories and widespread civil unrest.
The climax of the turmoil came in February 1917, when the Tsar abdicated. Quite suddenly, the 300 year Romanov dynasty came to an end. In the Gathering Storm, former Emperor Nicholas II, together with former Empress Alexandra and their five children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei, would meet a violent end.
The provisional government that took power after the abdication confined the royal family to the Alexander Palace at Tsarskoye Selo, some 15 miles south of Petrograd. They were essentially under house arrest. Family members were allowed to correspond with relatives and friends. One remarkable collection at Hoover is the Ekaterina Zborovskaia papers.
The Romanov letters that it contains are incredibly powerful. Zborovskaia kept the letters throughout her life, often as received, including the envelopes and pressed flowers the girls sent in their letters. They addressed her by her nickname, Katya. The letters begin with an Easter greeting written by Anastasia. She writes of mutual friends, asks when one of them expects to marry.
Apart from the illnesses she records, one might assume the Romanov children's lives were continuing in a relatively normal way. In August 1917, the family was moved to Tobolivsk, a city in Western Siberia, where they were housed in the governor's mansion. The Romanovs' letters from Tobolsk indicate that boredom was usually their greatest enemy.
They seem unaware of larger ongoing political dramas, although they must have been made aware of the Bolsheviks seizure of power. On August 15, 1917, Anastasia sends a letter that begins, Dear Katia, I write to you, though I am certain this letter will never reach you. The final letter in the collection is dated February 22, 1918.
In it, Anastasia writes, the children spend time playing bridge, singing and studying, and in the evenings their father reads to them aloud. Only the appearance of a brief line. Our mood is not very merry, hints at the deepening gloom among the family members. By spring 1918, a civil war was brewing across the country.
Fearing that the former Tsar might fall into the hands of hostile forces closing in from the east, the Soviet authorities decided to move the Romanov family from Tobolsk west to Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains. Communication with the outside world was completely forbidden. A much harsher regime was enforced at their new place of confinement, the Ipatiev House, a former merchant's home.
It was in that house, on the night of July 16th, 17th of 1918, that the family was murdered by their Bolshevik guards, shot to death in a basement room. It's the story of an atrocity that extinguished the old Russia as we knew it. The road back was now sealed off.
The road ahead featured the brutality of Soviet rule, which was to last for over seven decades.
