the relics of the tsar family

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The Relics of the Tsar Family

Remains of tsar's heir may have been found

Tsar Nicholas II and members of his family. Photograph: PA

Almost 90 years after imperial Russia's last tsar was executed with his wife and children by a

Bolshevik firing squad, the family may be reunited once more.

Archaeologists believe the newly discovered remains of a boy and a young woman are those of Nicholas II's only son, Alexei, and a daughter, Maria.

Alexei, who was 13 and first in line to the throne, was murdered with his sister and the rest of hisfamily in the basement of a nobleman's house in Yekaterinburg, central Russia, as the pro-tsarist

white army approached at the height of the Russian civil war in 1918.

To prevent the family's remains - and particularly those of Alexei - becoming a shrine to tsarists,

the executioners were ordered to mutilate and hide the bodies.

They were doused in acid and dumped in a mine at Galina Yama, near Yekaterinburg. The killersthrew a grenade down the mineshaft to disguise the identities of their victims.

In 1991 the remains of Nicholas, his wife, Alexandra, and three daughters were exhumed from a

burial site nearby - the executioners had moved the bodies, fearing they had been seen.

But Alexei and Maria were not with them, leading to theories they had somehow escaped alive.

Now the 89-year-old riddle may have been solved. Bones found in a scorched area near

Yekaterinburg belong to a boy and a young woman roughly the ages of the Alexei and Maria.

Their location appears to correspond to a site described in writing by the then chief executioner,Yakov Yurovsky, according to Sergei Pogorelov, the deputy head of a Yekaterinburg

archaeological research centre.

"An anthropologist has determined that the bones belong to two young individuals; a young male

he found was aged roughly 10 to13 and a young woman about 18 to 23," Mr Pogorelov toldRussia's NTV television.



If they prove to be the remains of Alexei and Maria, it will confirm the authenticity of the 1991

discovery of the rest of the family, which has been questioned despite conclusive DNA evidence.Genetic material from the British royal family - the last surviving close relatives of the

Romanovs - was used to prove that all but Alexei and one daughter, Maria, were buried near the

execution site.

Edvard Radzinsky, the author of a book on Nicholas II, told NTV the find could confirm the

authenticity of the earlier discovery by providing "documentary affirmation of what is written inYurovsky's notes".

According to NTV, a 1934 report based on Mr Yurovsky's oral evidence indicated the bodies of nine victims were doused with sulphuric acid and buried along a road, while those of Alexei and

a sister were burned and left in a pit nearby.

Nicholas, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana and Anastasia were reburied in 1998 in St Petersburg.

However, Russia's Orthodox Church scaled down its involvement in the ceremony, citing

questions over the missing corpses and doubts as to whether the recovered bones were actuallythose of the royal family.

The church did canonise the remains in 2000, and in 2003 a lavish £7m memorial church openedon the site of Ipatiyev House, where the family had been led downstairs to their deaths after

being told they were to have their picture taken.

Marble floors and ornate paintings, a bare cross and a box adorn the chamber where they were

executed.

They had been taken from their beds at 12.30am on July 17 1918. Half an hour elapsed from the

first shot to the last and some reports suggest the daughters were bayonetted because jewels sewninto their corsets deflected the bullets.

In the latest find archaeologists discovered shards of a ceramic container of sulphuric acid as

well as nails, metal strips from a wooden box and bullets. Metal detectors were used in the week-long search.

Mr Pogorelov said the remains and other items must undergo further tests.

A representative of the Romanov family, which ruled Russia from the mid-18th century, was

cautious. Speaking from London, Ivan Artseshchevsky said: "It is necessary to treat these

findings very cautiously."

He cited the controversy over the bones identified as Nicholas and the rest of the family, sayingtiny statistical margins of error in the identifications had sparked "huge doubts and many

disputes".

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2007/aug/24/russia

Suspected remains of tsar's children still being studied






Yekaterinburg, January 22, Interfax - Forensic scientists have come to a preliminary conclusion that body

fragments unearthed near a country road in summer 2007 are "with a great degree of probability" the

remains of the son and one of the daughters of last Russian tsar Nicholas II.

The remains, fragments of the bodies of a boy aged between 10 and 14 and a woman of 20 bearing marks

of homicide, were buried by the side of the Staraya Koptyakovskaya Road near Yekaterinburg, the citywhere a Bolshevik firing squad put Nicholas, his family and some members of his entourage to death in

July 1918.

The Sverdlovsk Regional Forensic Medicine Bureau and a lab in Moscow began genetic investigations of

the remains late in December 2007. The bureau chief said it would be impossible to finish the studies by

the start of February, an initial deadline. "I can't say exactly how much time will be needed," Nikolay

Nevolin told Interfax.

The bureau does have some findings.

However, "we are by no means publicizing them," Nevolin said.

"The investigations that have been done so far don't give us any reason to question anything. There are

results that are being obtained step by step, but all comments will come after the Russian side and an

independent lab finish their investigations. So far everything is going normally," he said.

http://www.interfax-religion.com/?act=news&div=4189

Remains found in Urals likely to belong to tsar's children

15:21 22/01/2008

YEKATERINBURG, January 22 (RIA Novosti) - Preliminary results of genetic analysis carried out on

the remains discovered in the Urals in July 2007 show they belong to the last Russian tsar's children, the

region's chief forensic expert said Tuesday.

The remains of a boy and a young woman were exhumed near Yekaterinburg, where Tsar Nickolas II, his

wife, their four daughters and son, and several servants, were shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918. They are

believed to belong to Nicholas II's son and heir Alexis, and daughter Maria.

"Tests conducted in Yekaterinburg and Moscow allowed DNA to be extracted from the bones, which

proved positive," Nikolai Nevolin said. "Once the genetic analysis has been completed in Russia, its

results will be compared with test results from foreign experts."

Nevolin said the final results would be published in April or May of 2008.

Initial studies revealed that the remains belong to a boy of about 12-14 years of age and a 16-18-year-old

girl.



http://en.rian.ru/russia/20080122/97524018.html






The tsar and his family members' remains were also discovered near Yekaterinburg in 1991. They were

authenticated and buried in the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg in 1998, although forensic

examination results have been challenged since then.

The Russian Orthodox Church, which has canonized the murdered Romanov family, called the 1998

burial "a political show."


DNA confirms IDs of czar's children, ending mystery

By MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer Wed Apr 30, 7:20 PM ET

MOSCOW - For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners gunned down Czar Nicholas II and his family,

there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia's throne.

Some said the delicate 13-year-old had somehow survived and escaped; others believed his bones were

lost in Russia's vastness, buried in secret amid fear and chaos as the country lurched into civil war.

Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery by identifying bone shards found in a forest as

those of Alexei and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria.

The remains of their parents — Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra — and three siblings, including the

czar's youngest daughter, Anastasia, were unearthed in 1991 and reburied in the imperial resting place in

St. Petersburg. The Russian Orthodox Church made all seven of them saints in 2000.

Despite the earlier discoveries and ceremonies, the absence of Alexei's and Maria's remains gnawed at

descendants of the Romanov dynasty, history buffs and royalists. Even if Wednesday's announcement is

confirmed and widely accepted, many descendants of the royal family are unlikely to be fully assuaged;

they seek formal "rehabilitation" by the government.

"The tragedy of the czar's family will only end when the family is declared victims of political

repression," said German Lukyanov, a lawyer for royal descendants.

Nicholas abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, and he and his family were detained.

They were shot by a firing squad on July 17, 1918, in the basement of the Yekaterinburg house where

they were being held.

Rumors persisted that some of the family had survived and escaped. Claims by women to be Anastasia

were particularly prominent, although there were also pretenders to Alexei's and Maria's identities.

"It was 99.9 percent clear they had all been killed; now with these shards, it's 100 percent," said Nadia

Kizenko, a Russian scholar at the University at Albany, State University of New York. "Those who regret

this news will be those who liked the royal pretender myth."

Alexei was one of the more compelling of the victims, drawing sympathy because of his hemophilia. His

mother's terror of the disease and fear that he would not live to gain the throne were key to her falling

under the thrall of the hypnotic and sexually ravenous self-declared holy man Rasputin, who exerted vast

influence on the royal family.






Researchers unearthed the bone shards last summer in a forest near Yekaterinburg, where the royal family

was killed, and enlisted Russian and U.S. laboratories to conduct DNA tests.

Eduard Rossel, governor of the region 900 miles east of Moscow, said tests done by a U.S. laboratory had

identified the shards as those of Alexei and Maria.

"This has confirmed that indeed it is the children," he said. "We have now found the entire family."

"The main genetic laboratory in the United States has concluded its work with a full confirmation of our

own laboratories' work," Rossel said.

He did not specify the laboratory, but a genetic research team working at the University of Massachusetts

Medical School has been involved in the process. Evgeny Rogaev, who headed the team that tested the

remains in Moscow and at the medical school in Worcester, Mass., was called into the case by the

Russian Federation Prosecutor's Office.

He told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he delivered the results to Russian authorities, but said

it was up to the prosecutor's office —

not him or his team —

to disclose the findings.

"The most difficult work is done and we have delivered to them our expert analysis, but we are still

working," he said. "Scientifically, we want to make the most complete investigation possible."

The test results were based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material passed down only

from mothers to children. That DNA is more stable than nuclear DNA — the material inherited from the

father's side — especially when remains are badly damaged.

In this case, the bone fragments were so shattered and burned that Rogaev's team first had to determine

whether enough uncontaminated genetic material still existed for testing.

The delicate work proved that, indeed, useful DNA could be extracted from a very small amount of thematerial — a critical fact, since they wanted to preserve as much of the bone fragments as possible out of

respect for the victims.

The researchers also compared DNA from the remains with those of Empress Alexandra, who was a

granddaughter of Britain's Queen Victoria and a distant relative of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen

Elizabeth II.

With the mitochondrial analysis completed, the team is working on the nuclear DNA analysis and

comparing the samples to paternal relatives of the czar's family.

That information, along with conclusions already delivered to the Russian prosecutors, eventually will besubmitted to a professional journal for peer review and publication.

It was unclear if the Russian Orthodox Church will recognize them as genuine. The church's press service

said no one could comment on Wednesday's announcement.

It was also unclear whether the descendents of the royal family would accept the identification. Lukyanov

said neither he nor his clients had received confirmation.



Lukyanov's efforts to get the government to declare the royal family victims of political repression have

been repeatedly rejected by Russian courts, which have said the family's killing was premeditated murder,

not a political reprisal.

He said Russia had much to do to overcome its tortured past.

"They say that as long as the last soldier remains unburied, the war continues," Lukyanov told AP. "So

long as the last victim of Bolshevik terror and the Communist regime remains unrehabilitiated, the

repression will continue."

___

Associated Press writers Carley Petesch in New York and Stephanie Reitz in Hartford, Conn., contributed

to this report.

http://web.archive.org/web/20080501043005/http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/russia_

czar_s_family

http://web.archive.org/web/20080501043005/http:/news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/russia_czar_s_family





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