Deliberate misinformation from the new Bolshevik regime, combined with the fact that no bodies were found for decades, fueled persistent rumors of survivors among the royal family. Here are the most intriguing imposters to the Romanov name.
Anna Anderson/Franziska Schanzkowska
Dozens of women claimed to be the youngest Romanov princess, Anastasia, but the most famous was Anna Anderson, who surfaced in 1920 in a German mental hospital after jumping off a Berlin bridge. Anderson stuck to her claim, even after evidence surfaced to suggest she was in fact a Polish woman named Franziska Schanzkowska. When she died in 1984 in Charlottesville, Virginia, her death certificate recorded the name, birthdate and birthplace of the Russian princess. Later analysis of her DNA matched her with a descendant of Schanzkowska, not the Russian royals.
Michael Goleniewski
A Polish intelligence officer, he worked as a spy for the Soviet Union but ended up passing information to the CIA, helping to expose KGB mules inside Western governments and intelligence agencies. When he defected to the U.S. in 1961, Goleniewski told his CIA debriefers that he was actually Alexei, the young czarevich thought to have been killed with his family in 1918. Though he gave his age as 18 years younger than Alexei would have been, and doctors could not confirm that he had hemophilia, like Alexei had, Goleniewski continued to claim his Romanov identity until he died in 1993
YOU ARE READING
The Romanovs
SachbücherThe Romanov family was the last imperial dynasty to rule Russia. They first came to power in 1613, and over the next 3 centuries, 18 Romanovs took the Russian throne, including Peter the great, Catherine the great, Alexander 1 and Nicholas 2. During...
