Question by Mimi259: What effect did the death of Nicholas Romanov II have on Russia?
I am writing a paper and I really need to know this.I just need to know how his murder effected the public and how they reacted. I also need you to put your sources, seeing as I am writing a paper. If you know anything about Anna Anderson, I would really like that, too! Thanks.
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Answer by Nzie
The tsar was forced to abdicate, then after the 2nd Revolution, he and his family were effectively under house arrest. They tried to send them to England, because the King of England was a relative of both the tsar and tsarina, but he refused to accept them, so Lenin et al. decided they had to eliminate the possibility of a monarchial return (Nicholas had been quite the autocrat). They then exiled them internally to Yekaterinaburg, before killing them secretly in the night and hiding the bodies. They were in fact so terrified of the rumors that did eventually start about a member of the royal family surviving that they dug the bodies up and mutilated them further and buried them in a different place.
I doubt that the general populace were informed. You have to understand that the communism of the USSR relied heavily on secrecy and limiting information. Once someone was gone he was obliterated, to the point of actually sending out replacement articles to owners of Soviet encyclopedias to cut out those who had fallen out of favor. The general public perception ended up being a quiet rumor of the escape of some family member, usually the Anastasia rumors, which were perpetuated by her hopeful grandmother. But the entire family was slaughtered, and I imagine it was very hushed up.
I doubt you will able to find evidence on the public opinion; freedom of opinion didn’t exist at that time in Russia. The Soviets regularly manipulated data so it is complete unreliable. The best you can hope for is some foreigner’s account. You can only get this sort of information from legitimate research, not internet opinion polls.
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Troy says
By the time the Tsar and his family were murdered they had no political or social relevance in Russia. Nicholas abdicated a year before his execution, for himself and on behalf of his only son. The dynasty ended when Nicholas' brother abdicated as well.
The whites had hoped to reinstall the monarchy and they needed to rescue the imperial family for this but the actual murders changed nothing about the Revolutionary arena or the events of warfare and politics occurring in Russia or the rest of Europe. By that time Kerensky and the moderates had lost all relevance in the government and Nicholas was the last person to exercise any type of influence on the newly born Soviet government.
Ordinary Russians knew very little about the details of the family's execution. The murders were handled as a secretive affairs for which Lenin and the Moscow administration took no responsibility. Instead, when the murders were eventually acknowledged they were blamed on a disorderly decision at the lower levels in which the family's guard, Yakov Yurovksy, hastily decided to kill them before the white army entered Yekaterinburg. The Russian aristocracy and royalty, particularly those who were in exile including the Tsar's mother and sisters were unaware of the murders and nothing was officially confirmed.
I'm sure many whites and peasants briefly lamented the executions but the reality of the Russian people at the time prevented them from overall caring much for a deposed ruler who had been a very bad one and by the time of his death had lost all his power and influence.
Anna Anderson's real name was Francizka Schanzkowska, a Polish woman who impersonated the tsar's youngest daughter until the time of her death in the early 1980s. DNA exams revealed that she was not the Grand Princess and that instead she was a somewhat lunatic, poor woman who managed to pull a long charade many people actually believed. She was a type of celebrity in America but for the most part, only unimportant distant relations of the Romanovs believed her story. She was found in Berlin after trying to commit suicide and transported to a mental hospital where she claimed to be Anastasia Romanova. She eventually went to court to prove her identity, with the help of several Russian aristocrats who were hoping for a few minutes of celebrity but her case was not strong enough and her claim was dismissed. Even so, she forever claimed to be Anastasia.
Her story was somewhat more believable when the grave of the Romanovs was discovered and made public, and two bodies were found missing, Alexei Romanov's and one of the daughter's. However, I believe two years ago or so the burnt remains of these kids were found near the place where Yurovsky claimed to have left them and DNA test confirmed what logic had dictated for almost a century: that there were no survivors.