GUSTAVO F.

DALEN EVIDENCE
LLB 3-A

1. What happened to the Romanov Family?

The House of was the reigning dynasty in Russia from 1613 until
the abdication of Tsar Nicholas II on 15 March 1917, as a result of the
February Revolution. The House of Romanov was the second dynasty
to rule Russia, the first being the House of Rurik.

The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas II, his wife
Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria,
Anastasia, and Alexei), were shot and bayoneted to death in
Yekaterinburg on the night of 16–17 July 1918. According to the official
state version in the USSR, former Tsar Nicholas Romanov, along with
members of his family and retinue, was executed by firing squad, by
order of the Ural Regional Soviet, due to the threat of the city being
occupied by Whites (Czechoslovak Legion). By the assumption of a
number of researchers, this was done according to instructions by
Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky.

It is estimated that by 1920, of the 53 Romanovs living at the time

of the Bolsheviks’ seizure of power in October 1917, only 35 remained
alive. Those who could fled Russia by whatever means possible, on
foot and by boat. About a dozen Romanovs, including Nicholas’s
mother, Maria Feodorovna; his sister Xenia; and her husband,
Alexandr, were evacuated from their Crimean estate by warships sent
by their royal relative, George V of England.

2. What happened to the bodies and bones of the Romanov

family?
Their bodies were then taken to the Koptyaki forest where they
were stripped and mutilated. The Bolsheviks took the family's bodies
to an abandoned mine outside town and tried unsuccessfully to blow
the mine up. They then retrieved the royal bodies, burned and
doused them with acid, and buried them in a pit.
In 1919, White Army investigation (of Sokolov) failed to find the
gravesite, concluding that the imperial family's remains had been
cremated at the mineshaft called Ganina Yama, since evidence of fire
was found. In 1979 and 2007, the remains of the bodies were found in
two unmarked graves in a field called Porosenkov Log.
The burial site was discovered in 1979 by an amateur sleuth, but
the existence of the remains was not made public until 1989, during
the glasnost period. The identity of the remains was confirmed by
forensic and DNA investigation. They were reburied in the Peter and
Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg in 1998, 80 years after they were
killed, in a funeral that was not attended by key members of the
Russian Orthodox Church, who disputed the authenticity of the
remains. A second, smaller grave containing the remains of two
Romanov children missing from the larger grave was discovered by
amateur archaeologists in 2007. However, their remains are kept in a
state repository pending further DNA tests. In 2008, after considerable
and protracted legal wrangling, the Russian Prosecutor General's
office rehabilitated the Romanov family as "victims of political
repressions". A criminal case was opened by the post-Soviet
government in 1993, but nobody was prosecuted on the basis that the
perpetrators were dead.

3. Whose DNA was used to identify the bones?

In 2015, the patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church, in
conjunction with an investigation committee set up by Putin, ordered
the retesting of all the bones. Nicholas II and his family were discreetly
exhumed and their DNA compared with that of living relatives,
including England's Prince Philip, one of whose grandmothers was the
Romanov Grand Duchess Olga Constantinovna. The tsar's DNA was
also compared to that of his father, Alexander III, and grandfather
Alexander II. (For the latter, scientists were able to use blood caked on
a tunic the tsar was wearing when he was assassinated.)
The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation, which is
responsible for probing serious crimes, said DNA analysis “confirmed
the remains found belonged to the former Emperor Nicholas II, his
family members and members of their entourage.”.
4. Whose member of the Romanov Family was not found?
The Romanov family were dug up in 1991, formally identified
using DNA samples, and reburied in a St Petersburg cathedral. But
two of the Romanovs were never found. The bodies of the tsar's heir,
Prince Alexei, and his sister Princess Maria were missing. Archive
evidence suggested the pair had been buried away from the others.
But repeated digs at the leafy spot on the outskirts of Yekaterinburg in
southern Russia, where the remains of the rest of the family were
found, failed to reveal a resting place.

Russian archaeologists confirmed they had discovered the

remains of a 10-13 year old boy and an 18-23 year old woman -
presumed to be Prince Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria. The wooded
site, six miles north of Yekaterinburg, is not far from the original spot
where the other Romanovs were secretly discovered

Reference:
1. en.wikipedia.org
2. www.theguardian.com
3. www.smithsonianmag.com
4. www.townandcountrymag.com