Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia Biography

Grand Duchess Anastasia was the youngest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II, the last sovereign of Imperial Russia, who was executed along with the rest of her family by members of the Cheka, the Bolshevik secret police, on July 17, 1918. While the bodies of some of her family members were found in the years following the killings, her body and that of her brother, Alexei Nikolaevich, were not conclusively identified. This gave rise to rumors that the duchess and her brother might have escaped the execution. There were many women who surfaced from different backgrounds, claiming to be the duchess. During the 1920s, one of these impersonators, a woman named Anna Anderson even fought to prove herself the rightful claimant of Anastasia’s inheritance. Decades later her suit was rejected but the mystery of the Grand Duchess Anastasia remained unsolved. Over the years the unknown fate of the duchess inspired a number of books, plays and movies. In the early 1990s, the mass grave holding the remains of the Tsar, his wife, and three of their daughters was revealed though Anastasia’s remains were yet to be found. The enduring mystery surrounding her was finally put to rest when a DNA analysis of another grave in 2007 conclusively identified her remains.