Documents concerning the execution of the last Emperor of Russia Nicholas II and members of the royal family. Among the unique documents there is an act of abdication of Nicholas from the throne and a telegram in which the Bolsheviks ask Lenin for permission to shoot the tsar. Also among the documents there is a medical report that can resolve the old dispute about whether the remains of the royal family were actually discovered in Yekaterinburg in 1991. The ROC still does not recognize this fact.

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Romanov family. Archival photo, RIA Novosti

What is the uniqueness of documents

In total, there are 281 documents in the selection, which is dedicated to a special section on the State Archives website. Papers had to be collected from the funds of the State Archive itself, the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History, the Russian State Archive of Contemporary History, the Archive of the President of the Russian Federation, the Perm State Archive of Contemporary History, the State Archive of the Sverdlovsk Region and the Center for Documentation of Public Organizations of the Sverdlovsk Region.

Act of abdication of Nicholas II from the throne

As the scientific director of the State Archives, Sergei Mironenko, among the submitted documents there are papers that are shown to the public for the first time.

For example, you can take the autobiography of Commissar Yakov Yurovsky, which he wrote when applying to the Commission for the Appointment of Personal Pensions - this autograph of the "chief executioner" of the Romanov family was discovered only a few months ago.

Autobiography of Yakov Yurovsky

Also, among the documents found, there is one that, perhaps, will allow to resolve the old dispute between scientists and those who do not recognize this fact, for example, the Russian Orthodox Church. This document concerns an incident with an attempt on the life of the future Emperor Nicholas II during his visit to Japan in 1891. Unlike the Russian Orthodox Church, scientists are sure that the remains of the executed royal family were discovered in 1991 in Yekaterinburg.

As you know, in the city of Otsu, one of the Japanese policemen hit Nikolai Alexandrovich on the head with a saber. However, for a long time we were unable to find out from which side the blade was struck and how penetrating it turned out to be. Meanwhile, the exact description of this wound is of great importance in identifying the skull, which was found in a burial near Yekaterinburg and presumably belongs to the emperor. Our employees had to study all the surviving letters of people who were part of the Russian delegation. Finally, we managed to find a letter from one of the officers accompanying the Tsarevich describing the assassination attempt itself and, most importantly, with a medical certificate attached to it.

Sergei Mironenko, scientific director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation

Then, Nicholas was saved from serious injuries by the Greek prince George, who was walking with the future emperor of Russia and exposed his cane to the blow of a fanatic. As a result, the saber only slightly hooked the monarch, cutting off a thin piece of skin from his head.

The discovered medical act allows us to assert that there were no injuries left on Nikolai's skull, and, therefore, no callus could form during the healing of the wound. But it is precisely the absence of such a callus on the skull raised from a secret burial in the Piglet Log that is one of the key arguments among those expressed by the leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church and other representatives of the “doubting side”: they say, if there are no traces of callus, then these are not imperial remains .

Sergei Mironenko, scientific director of the State Archives of the Russian Federation

Why the Russian Orthodox Church does not recognize the remains of the royal family

The Russian Orthodox Church officially states that the remains belong to the royal family. The reasons are called different, although for the most part these are just versions. According to one of them, the church did not recognize the royal remains from Porosyonkov Log, because at one time it could not get land for the construction of a temple complex here (the site belongs to Russian Railways). Therefore, the construction had to be organized on Ganina Yama, where, according to the household version, the remains of the royal family were destroyed, and such a choice had to be ideologically justified.

According to another version, the church evades a direct answer about the execution of the royal family, canonized in 2000, so as not to embarrass the flock.

Imagine what will happen if the church starts talking about the fact that the saints were killed by Lenin, Stalin and the Bolsheviks? Half of the electorate of the Moscow Patriarchate are grandmothers, who still have the icon of the Savior Not Made by Hands next to the portrait of Stalin. It will be a real split.

Nikolai Neuimin, Head of the Romanov History Department of the Sverdlovsk Regional Museum of Local Lore

In October 2015, the Russian Orthodox Church demanded a re-examination of the exhumed remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria Romanov, found in 2007 on the Koptyakovskaya road in the Sverdlovsk region. Their authenticity was confirmed by experts from three countries at once: Austria, the USA and Russia, but this evidence was not enough for the ROC. They were planned to be buried in February 2016, but the ceremony had to be postponed at the insistence of the church. The children of the last emperor have not been buried so far, they are in safekeeping in the Russian Orthodox Church.

In November 2015, the Investigative Committee of Russia authenticated the remains of Nicholas II himself and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna, buried in 1998.

The further fate of the remains

March 15, 2016 about the need to bury all the executed Romanovs, their descendant of the royal dynasty, Prince Dmitry Romanov. According to him, such a gesture can unite the entire nation.

I was touched by the response of the modern generation of Russians, their sincere grief for the victims of the tragedy. My brother Prince Nikolai Romanovich very accurately called farewell to the royal family an act of "mutual repentance and forgiveness."

Dmitry Romanov, historian, writer, great-great-grandson of Nicholas I

Dmitry Romanov. Photo by Anton Novoderezhkin

In connection with the burial of the remains of the royal family, the question was raised whether the abdications of Nicholas II could be considered legitimate. According to his descendant, the abdication can legally be recognized as legal, only in this case, not Nicholas, but his son, Tsarevich Alexei, should be called the last emperor of Russia.

The refusal of Grand Duke Mikhail Alexandrovich, the emperor's brother, to accept the throne was logical. After all, according to the law, the throne was inherited by the son of the reigning monarch, and the sovereign could not renounce him for his son. Thus, from a purely legal point of view, the last tsar is Tsarevich Alexei Nikolaevich. Until the heir reaches the age of majority, a regency could become a practical form of government.

Dmitry Romanov, great-great-grandson of Nicholas I

On August 1, 2016, it became known that scientists could conduct an investigation into the circumstances of the death of the royal family, including organizing additional excavations near Yekaterinburg. And this is needed again in order to find out whether the children of Nicholas II Alexei and Maria Romanov were killed in that place, whose remains seem to have already been identified by experts.

But, as the academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the former director of the Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Veniamin Alekseev, said, the children of Emperor Nicholas II are mentioned only in the memoirs of Yakov Yurovsky, who is called the organizer of the execution of the royal family, so the information should be treated more critically and not stop research.

As far as I know, this is mentioned in his first note, but a source of this kind in historical science is not considered completely reliable and cannot serve as a reference document for the investigation into the death of the royal family.

The note of 1920 was long considered the original, but it turned out that it was written by academician Mikhail Pokrovsky from the words of Yurovsky. I do not think that the venerable academician wrote under the dictation of the illiterate Yurovsky, most likely, he carried out the task of the Bolshevik leadership on how the tsarist problem should have been presented at that stage.

Veniamin Alekseev, Academician of the Russian Academy of Sciences, former director of the Institute of History and Archeology of the Ural Branch of the Russian Academy of Sciences

The second note, found in 1922, according to the scientist could serve to convince readers of the authenticity of the first. The third version of the document, discovered in 1934, according to the academician, appeared on the eve of mass repressions, and if we compare all three versions of the notes with each other, we see discrepancies, which are probably related to the fact that the texts were custom-made.

The family of Emperor Nicholas II, who abdicated in 1917, was shot along with servants on the night of July 17, 1918 in Yekaterinburg in the house of engineer Ipatiev. Where their remains rested was hidden for a long time.

Telegram from the Presidium of the Yekaterinburg Regional Council of the Workers' and Peasants' Government to Chairman of the Council of People's Commissars Vladimir Lenin and Chairman of the Central Executive Committee Yakov Sverdlov

According to official history, on the night of July 16-17, 1918, Nikolai Romanov, along with his wife and children, was shot. After the burial was opened and identified, the remains were reburied in 1998 in the tomb of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. However, then the ROC did not confirm their authenticity.

“I cannot rule out that the church will recognize the royal remains as genuine if convincing evidence of their authenticity is found and if the examination is open and honest,” said Metropolitan Hilarion of Volokolamsk, head of the Department for External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, in July this year.

As you know, the Russian Orthodox Church did not participate in the burial of the remains of the royal family in 1998, explaining this by the fact that the church is not sure whether the true remains of the royal family are buried. The Russian Orthodox Church refers to the book of the Kolchak investigator Nikolai Sokolov, who concluded that all the bodies were burned. Some of the remains collected by Sokolov at the place of burning are stored in Brussels, in the church of St. Job the Long-suffering, and they have not been examined. At one time, a version of the note by Yurovsky, who supervised the execution and burial, was found - it became the main document before the transfer of the remains (along with the book of the investigator Sokolov). And now, in the upcoming year of the 100th anniversary of the execution of the Romanov family, the Russian Orthodox Church has been instructed to give a final answer to all the dark places of execution near Yekaterinburg. To obtain a final answer under the auspices of the Russian Orthodox Church, research has been conducted for several years. Once again, historians, geneticists, graphologists, pathologists and other specialists are rechecking the facts, powerful scientific forces and prosecutors are again involved, and all these actions again take place under a dense veil of secrecy.

Research on genetic identification is carried out by four independent groups of scientists. Two of them are foreign, working directly with the ROC. At the beginning of July 2017, the secretary of the church commission for studying the results of the study of the remains found near Yekaterinburg, Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Yegoryevsk, said: a large number of new circumstances and new documents were discovered. For example, Sverdlov's order to execute Nicholas II was found. In addition, according to the results of recent research, forensic experts confirmed that the remains of the king and queen belong to them, since a trace was suddenly found on the skull of Nicholas II, which is interpreted as a trace from a saber blow he received when visiting Japan. As for the queen, dentists identified her by the world's first porcelain veneers on platinum pins.

Although, if you open the conclusion of the commission, written before the burial in 1998, it says: the bones of the sovereign's skull are so destroyed that the characteristic callus cannot be found. The same conclusion noted severe damage to the teeth of the alleged remains of Nikolai by periodontal disease, since this person had never been to the dentist. This confirms that it was not the tsar who was shot, since the records of the Tobolsk dentist, whom Nikolai turned to, remained. In addition, the fact that the growth of the skeleton of "Princess Anastasia" is 13 centimeters larger than her lifetime growth has not yet been found. Well, as you know, miracles happen in the church ... Shevkunov did not say a word about the genetic examination, and this despite the fact that the genetic studies of 2003, conducted by Russian and American specialists, showed that the genome of the body of the alleged empress and her sister Elizabeth Feodorovna do not match , which means no relationship.

On this topic

In addition, in the museum of the city of Otsu (Japan) there are things left after the injury of the policeman Nicholas II. They have biological material that can be examined. According to them, Japanese geneticists from the Tatsuo Nagai group proved that the DNA of the remains of "Nicholas II" from near Yekaterinburg (and his family) does not 100% match the DNA of biomaterials from Japan. During the Russian DNA examination, second cousins ​​were compared, and in the conclusion it was written that "there are matches." The Japanese compared relatives of cousins. There are also the results of a genetic examination of the President of the International Association of Forensic Physicians, Mr. Bonte from Dusseldorf, in which he proved that the found remains and twins of the family of Nicholas II Filatov are relatives. Perhaps, from their remains in 1946, the “remains of the royal family” were created? The problem has not been studied.

Earlier, in 1998, the Russian Orthodox Church, on the basis of these conclusions and facts, did not recognize the existing remains as authentic, but what will happen now? In December, all the conclusions of the Investigative Committee and the commission of the Russian Orthodox Church will be considered by the Council of Bishops. It is he who will decide on the attitude of the church to the Yekaterinburg remains. Let's see why everything is so nervous and what is the history of this crime?

Worth the fight for that kind of money

Today, some of the Russian elites have suddenly awakened interest in one very piquant story of relations between Russia and the United States, connected with the Romanov royal family. Briefly, the story is this: more than 100 years ago, in 1913, the United States created the Federal Reserve System (FRS) - the central bank and printing press for the production of international currency, which still operates today. The Fed was created for the emerging League of Nations (now the UN) and would be a single world financial center with its own currency. Russia contributed 48,600 tons of gold to the "authorized capital" of the system. But the Rothschilds demanded that Woodrow Wilson, who was then re-elected as President of the United States, transfer the center to their private property along with gold. The organization became known as the Fed, where Russia owned 88.8%, and 11.2% - 43 international beneficiaries. Receipts stating that 88.8% of gold assets for a period of 99 years are under the control of the Rothschilds, six copies were transferred to the family of Nicholas II. The annual income on these deposits was fixed at 4%, which was supposed to be transferred to Russia annually, but settled on the X-1786 account of the World Bank and on 300 thousand accounts in 72 international banks. All these documents confirming the right to 48,600 tons of gold pledged to the FRS from Russia, as well as income from leasing it, the mother of Tsar Nicholas II, Maria Fedorovna Romanova, deposited in one of the Swiss banks. But the conditions for access there are only for the heirs, and this access is controlled by the Rothschild clan. For the gold provided by Russia, gold certificates were issued that allowed the metal to be claimed in parts - the royal family hid them in different places. Later, in 1944, the Bretton Woods Conference confirmed Russia's right to 88% of the Fed's assets.

This “golden” issue was once proposed by two well-known Russian oligarchs – Roman Abramovich and Boris Berezovsky. But Yeltsin "did not understand" them, and now, apparently, that very "golden" time has come ... And now this gold is remembered more and more often - though not at the state level.

On this topic

In Lahore, Pakistan, 16 police officers have been arrested in connection with the shooting of an innocent family on the streets of the city. According to eyewitnesses, the police stopped the car on its way to the wedding and brutally cracked down on its driver and passengers.

For this gold they kill, fight and make fortunes on it

Today's researchers believe that all wars and revolutions in Russia and in the world occurred due to the fact that the Rothschild clan and the United States did not intend to return the gold to the Russian Federal Reserve. After all, the execution of the royal family made it possible for the Rothschild clan not to give away gold and not pay for its 99-year lease. “Now, out of three Russian copies of the agreement on gold invested in the Fed, two are in our country, the third is presumably in one of the Swiss banks,” researcher Sergey Zhilenkov believes. - In the cache, in the Nizhny Novgorod region, there are documents from the royal archive, among which there are 12 "golden" certificates. If they are presented, then the global financial hegemony of the United States and the Rothschilds will simply collapse, and our country will receive a lot of money and all the opportunities for development, since it will no longer be strangled from across the ocean, ”the historian is sure.

Many wanted to close questions about royal assets with the reburial. Professor Vladlen Sirotkin also has an estimate for the so-called military gold exported to the West and East during the First World War and the Civil War: Japan - 80 billion dollars, Great Britain - 50 billion, France - 25 billion, USA - 23 billion, Sweden - 5 billion, the Czech Republic - $1 billion. Total - 184 billion. Surprisingly, officials in the US and UK, for example, do not dispute these figures, but are surprised at the lack of requests from Russia. By the way, the Bolsheviks remembered Russian assets in the West in the early 20s. Back in 1923, People's Commissar for Foreign Trade Leonid Krasin ordered a British law firm to evaluate Russian real estate and cash deposits abroad. By 1993, the firm reported that it had amassed a $400 billion data bank! And this is legal Russian money.

Why did the Romanovs die? Britain did not accept them!

There is a long-term study, unfortunately, by Professor Vladlen Sirotkin (MGIMO), who has already passed away, “Foreign Gold of Russia” (M., 2000), where the gold and other holdings of the Romanov family accumulated in the accounts of Western banks are also estimated at no less than 400 billion dollars, and together with investments - more than 2 trillion dollars! In the absence of heirs from the Romanovs, the closest relatives turn out to be members of the English royal family ... These are whose interests may be the background of many events of the XIX-XXI centuries ... By the way, it is not clear (or, on the contrary, it is understandable) for what reasons the royal house of England refused the family three times Romanovs in the shelter. The first time in 1916, at the apartment of Maxim Gorky, an escape was planned - the rescue of the Romanovs by abduction and the internment of the royal couple during their visit to an English warship, then sent to Great Britain. The second was Kerensky's request, which was also rejected. Then they did not accept the request of the Bolsheviks. And this despite the fact that the mothers of George V and Nicholas II were sisters. In the surviving correspondence, Nicholas II and George V call each other "Cousin Nicky" and "Cousin Georgie" - they were cousins ​​with an age difference of less than three years, and in their youth these guys spent a lot of time together and were very similar in appearance. As for the queen, her mother, Princess Alice, was the eldest and beloved daughter of the English Queen Victoria. At that time, 440 tons of gold from the gold reserves of Russia and 5.5 tons of personal gold of Nicholas II were in England as collateral for military loans. Now think about it: if the royal family died, then to whom would the gold go? Close relatives! Isn't that the reason why Cousin Georgie was denied admission to Cousin Nicky's family? To get gold, its owners had to die. Officially. And now all this must be connected with the burial of the royal family, which will officially testify that the owners of untold wealth are dead.

Versions of life after death

All versions of the death of the royal family that exist today can be divided into three. The first version: the royal family was shot near Yekaterinburg, and their remains, with the exception of Alexei and Maria, were reburied in St. Petersburg. The remains of these children were found in 2007, all examinations were carried out on them, and they, apparently, will be buried on the day of the 100th anniversary of the tragedy. When confirming this version, it is necessary for accuracy to once again identify all the remains and repeat all examinations, especially genetic and pathological anatomical ones. The second version: the royal family was not shot, but was scattered throughout Russia and all family members died of natural causes, having lived their lives in Russia or abroad, in Yekaterinburg, a family of twins was shot (members of the same family or people from different families, but similar members of the emperor's family). Nicholas II had twins after Bloody Sunday 1905. When leaving the palace, three carriages left. In which of them Nicholas II sat is unknown. The Bolsheviks, having seized the archive of the 3rd department in 1917, had these twins. There is an assumption that one of the families of twins - the Filatovs, who are distantly related to the Romanovs - followed them to Tobolsk. The third version: the secret services added false remains to the burial places of members of the royal family as they died naturally or before opening the grave. For this, it is necessary to carefully track, among other things, the age of the biomaterial.

Here is one of the versions of the historian of the royal family, Sergei Zhelenkov, which seems to us the most logical, although very unusual.

Before investigator Sokolov, the only investigator who published a book about the execution of the royal family, worked investigators Malinovsky, Nametkin (his archive was burned along with his house), Sergeev (dismissed from the case and killed), Lieutenant General Diterikhs, Kirsta. All these investigators concluded that the royal family was not killed. Neither the Reds nor the Whites wanted to disclose this information - they understood that the American bankers were primarily interested in obtaining objective information. The Bolsheviks were interested in the money of the king, and Kolchak declared himself the Supreme Ruler of Russia, which could not be with a living sovereign.

Investigator Sokolov conducted two cases - one on the fact of the murder and the other on the fact of the disappearance. In parallel, military intelligence in the person of Kirst conducted an investigation. When the whites left Russia, Sokolov, fearing for the collected materials, sent them to Harbin - some of his materials were lost along the way. Sokolov's materials contained evidence of the financing of the Russian revolution by the American bankers Schiff, Kuhn and Loeb, and Ford became interested in these materials, in conflict with these bankers. He even called Sokolov from France, where he settled, to the USA. When returning from the USA to France, Nikolai Sokolov was killed. Sokolov's book came out after his death, and many people "worked" on it, removing many scandalous facts from there, so it cannot be considered completely truthful. The surviving members of the royal family were watched by people from the KGB, where a special department was created for this, which was dissolved during perestroika. The archive of this department has been preserved. The royal family was saved by Stalin - the royal family was evacuated from Yekaterinburg through Perm to Moscow and fell into the hands of Trotsky, then People's Commissar of Defense. To further save the royal family, Stalin carried out a whole operation, stealing it from Trotsky's people and taking them to Sukhumi, to a specially built house next to the former house of the royal family. From there, all family members were distributed to different places, Maria and Anastasia were taken to the Glinsk desert (Sumy region), then Maria was transported to the Nizhny Novgorod region, where she died of illness on May 24, 1954. Anastasia subsequently married Stalin's personal bodyguard and lived very secluded on a small farm, died

June 27, 1980 in the Volgograd region. The eldest daughters, Olga and Tatyana, were sent to the Serafimo-Diveevsky convent - the empress was settled not far from the girls. But they did not live here for long. Olga, having traveled through Afghanistan, Europe and Finland, settled in Vyritsa, Leningrad Region, where she died on January 19, 1976. Tatyana lived partly in Georgia, partly in the territory of the Krasnodar Territory, was buried in the Krasnodar Territory, died on September 21, 1992. Alexei and his mother lived in their dacha, then Alexei was transferred to Leningrad, where he was "made" a biography, and the whole world recognized him as a party and Soviet leader Alexei Nikolaevich Kosygin (Stalin sometimes called him a prince in front of everyone). Nicholas II lived and died in Nizhny Novgorod (December 22, 1958), and the tsarina died in the village of Starobelskaya, Lugansk region, on April 2, 1948, and was subsequently reburied in Nizhny Novgorod, where she and the emperor share a common grave. Three daughters of Nicholas II, except for Olga, had children. N.A. Romanov talked with I.V. Stalin, and the wealth of the Russian Empire was used to strengthen the power of the USSR ...

The interdepartmental working group proposed to the government of the Russian Federation to bury the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria on October 18 in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. The remains were identified by scientists from the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences. To what extent do the revealed new facts coincide with the results of the expertise conducted in the 1990s? Will they be able to dispel the doubts that were then expressed by some scientists? The RG correspondent talks about this with the director of the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences Nikolai Yankovsky.

As you know, the results of the last examination, which was carried out in the mid-90s, were not recognized not only by the Russian Orthodox Church, but also by some scientists. Remind me what the essence of these experts' doubts is.

Nikolai Yankovsky: These are two studies. One was carried out by the Japanese scientist Tatsuo Nagai, the other by Professor Lev Zhivotovsky and the American geneticist Alec Knight. Nagai studied the remains unknown to the official investigation, allegedly belonging to the Grand Duke Georgy Alexandrovich Romanov. The scientist argued that the features of the mitochondrial DNA of the tsar's brother did not coincide with the DNA of Nicholas II. Now it makes no sense to discuss what the matter is, what kind of sample Nagai studied in general. In his article, he himself admitted that his data coincided with those of geneticists. But the match is not complete. This only indicates that he does not own the technique of analysis.

As for the doubts of Zhivotovsky and Knight, they are connected with the tsar's wife Alexandra Feodorovna. These scientists claimed to have studied the remains of her sister, Elizabeth Feodorovna. And allegedly her DNA does not match what was obtained from the wife of Nicholas II. However, an analysis of the work of these authors shows that they failed to obtain a pure DNA preparation of Elizaveta Fedorovna, that is, in fact, they studied a mixture from different individuals. Simply put, this DNA was contaminated, which means that no definite conclusions can be drawn from this work at all. And their result does not match not only the DNA of Alexandra Feodorovna, but also the DNA of her living relatives. So whose remains they analyzed is not known.

But I want to emphasize that all doubts about the identification of the royal family are based on the results of the first examination, made in the early 90s. Then the remains found on the Old Koptyakovskaya road near Yekaterinburg were studied. But Tsarevich Alexei and one of the sisters were absent there. Genetic examination established that the burial contains a family - father, mother and three daughters.

But there was another examination. We studied the remains of two people who were found in 2007 70 meters from the first burial. It was assumed that they belonged to the royal children, who were not in the first burial. So Professor Evgeny Rogaev conducted a new examination, and all the remains from both burials. And at a fundamentally new technological level.

What is meant?

Nikolai Yankovsky: He studied not only those sections of DNA that forensic scientists usually study to identify a person. The coverage was much wider. The scientist also analyzed those sections of genetic texts that are inherited from only one of the parents. This is the mitochondrial DNA from the mother and the Y chromosome from the father.

But this is not enough. We received new material for genetic research, which made it possible to increase the reliability of the examination to almost 100%. The fact is that the shirt of Nicholas II with samples of his blood is kept in the Hermitage. She got on the shirt as a result of an attempt on the life of Nicholas, then still Tsarevich, during a trip to Japan in 1891. The fanatic samurai hit him on the head with his saber. No one has ever expressed doubts that this is the blood of Nicholas. So all the "records" in the DNA from the blood stains on the shirt completely coincided with those found in the DNA of the alleged remains of the king.

It would seem that now all doubts about the identification of Nicholas should be rejected.

Nikolai Yankovsky: True, but Professor Rogaev did not stop there either. The fact is that in the DNA of the king there was a "special sign" discovered during an investigation in the 1990s. He had not one "genetic text" in the mitochondrial DNA, as is usually the case, but two. They differed from each other in just one "genetic letter". The tsar received this "inheritance" from his mother, Maria Feodorovna. Rogaev traced on the relatives of the king how these texts behave. I will not bother readers with details, I will only say that this analysis also confirmed that we are dealing with the remains of Nicholas II.

And what about children? Are there no more doubts with them?

Nikolai Yankovsky: No. For the first time, it has been established that the genetic features that are in the DNA from the blood and the remains of the king coincide with the features of all his five children found in both burials. That is, science can claim that we have the remains of the royal family.

Infographics WG / Anton Perepletchikov / Yuri Medvedev

And what about Alexandra Fedorovna?

Nikolai Yankovsky: She was the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, from whom she inherited her mitochondrial DNA. During the first investigation, genetic expert Pavel Ivanov compared the DNA of the Empress and her sister's grandson, Prince Philip. The DNA from the remains was severely destroyed, and at that time only short pieces could be read. Although the coincidence was complete, the doubt still remained: what if it was by chance? Indeed, differences could be found in the unread part of the molecule. Over the following years, science has stepped far forward, and during the second examination, Yevgeny Rogaev read the DNA molecules of all members of the royal family in full and compared these texts with those received from relatives of the empress and her children. All features of the DNA matched perfectly. So there is no doubt that we have the remains of the queen in front of us.

In 1998, the burial of Nicholas II and members of his family took place in the Peter and Paul Cathedral

And what about the mutation, which, according to some historians, influenced the fate of the empire?

Nikolai Yankovsky: Are you talking about hemophilia?

This is a hereditary disease in which blood clotting is impaired. The disease was awarded to her descendants by Queen Victoria. Women - carriers of the mutation did not suffer from hemophilia, but passed it on to their sons. Among those who received the mutation was Tsarevich Alexei. Professor Rogaev found a hemophilia mutation not only in him, but also in Tsarina Alexandra, as well as her daughter Anastasia.

After the execution of the royal family, women appeared in one or the other part of the world, telling about their miraculous salvation and calling themselves Anastasia. What does genetics say about this?

Nikolai Yankovsky: All examinations clearly show that all members of the family of Nicholas II were found in the Ekaterinburg burial. These results of Russian geneticists coincide with independent studies of the remains, which were carried out in parallel in the UK, USA and Austria. Evgeny Rogaev's articles on the identification of the royal family have been published by the most prestigious international scientific journals. One of them was presented for publication by James Watson, the Nobel Prize winner who discovered the structure of DNA.

What is the main result of these studies?

Nikolai Yankovsky: We have a complete "portfolio" of scientific facts that allow us to say with absolute confidence: we are not dealing with the alleged remains of the royal family, but absolutely real ones. In 1998, Emperor Nicholas II Romanov, Empress Alexandra Feodorovna and their three daughters were buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress. The remains of the heir to the throne Tsarevich Alexei and his sister Maria are waiting to be reunited with them.

The killers carefully concealed all the evidence - it took almost a century to unravel this complex case. The family of the last emperor was shot in the summer of 1918, and in 2015 the Investigative Committee of Russia resumed the investigation. However, the criminals have long been known, and the main difficulty in the case was the reliable identification of their victims.

Destroying all traces of the crime was a task of particular importance. “I accepted the order and said that it would be carried out exactly, prepared a place where to take it and how to hide it, taking into account all the circumstances of the importance of the political moment,” wrote one of the participants in the massacre, Pyotr Yermakov, in his memoirs. To muffle the sound of gunshots, the firing squad started the engine of a truck that was waiting in the yard.

The Bolsheviks for a long time denied the very fact of the execution of the emperor and his relatives. Meanwhile, it was already established during the first investigation, which began a few days after the tragedy, when the White Army occupied Yekaterinburg. At the same time, the place of the first burial, Ganina Yama, was found and examined. However, the bodies were not found, and from the summer of 1919 - after the final arrival of Soviet power in the city - the topic became taboo for a long time. The execution house Ipatiev was demolished to the ground.

The dark secret of the royal burial was revealed under great secrecy. In the late 1970s, the local geologist Alexander Avdonin and the famous screenwriter from Moscow Geliy Ryabov took up the search. Both had long been interested in this topic, and Ryabov had good connections in the Ministry of Internal Affairs and even access to some closed archives. By joining forces, they studied documents, memoirs, maps. Putting together the evidence turned out to be easy: “Everything opened up as if by magic,” Ryabov said in an interview.

On the Koptyakovskaya road, in Porosenkov Log, not far from the former railway crossing, they found half-rotted sleepers that had sunk into the ground, and under them were human remains. The searchers were sure: in front of them was all that was left of the august family. But they also remembered that it was not customary to joke with the state machine of the USSR. By leaving marks, they decided to keep the information secure—and secret. “For future generations,” Avdonin explained.

Generations did not have to wait: already in 1991, a statement about the discovery of a possible burial place for the royal family was made openly. The Sverdlovsk prosecutor's office carried out excavations in the Piglet Log. History quickly reached the highest level: in 1993, the Prosecutor General's Office opened a criminal case, and a government commission began work. The search was led by Vladimir Solovyov, an investigator for especially important cases. The main task of those who worked with the remains was to find out who they belonged to.

The dead bodies were searched, stacked in a truck and taken to a pre-selected place - the Ganina Yama iron mine near the village of Koptyaki, which had been abandoned for several years. Here they removed their last valuables, burned their clothes, smashed their faces with rifle butts and threw them into one of the mines at dawn. “Not all people can politically evaluate and understand,” Yakov Yurovsky, the commandant of the Special Purpose House, later explained. “In the living, they would be a permanent banner, and even if they were corpses, this would also be a banner.” They should have just disappeared.

The researchers had rather meager and old evidence: bullets and about 700 half-decayed bones and their fragments, to which about 250 more were added during repeated excavations. somewhere nearby, under a large fire, separate from the others.

The sex and age of each were established, anthropological and dental examinations were carried out. After long ordeals with one of the skulls, forensic expert Sergei Nikitin found barely preserved traces of healed injuries. In 1891, still the heir, Nikolai traveled to Japan, where he was assassinated by a fanatic who managed to deliver two blows. The saber slipped, there was no dangerous injury, but the scar remained, and the blood-drenched shirt was preserved as a family heirloom of the Romanovs.

Genetic examination of the remains, conducted by Pavel Ivanov, showed that five of them belong to the father, mother and their three daughters. But most importantly, a “special sign” was found in the genome of the alleged king. The mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) isolated from these remains was of two types, differing by only one mutation. Apparently, it accidentally arose from his mother or grandmother, after which both types of mtDNA were passed on to children. Such heteroplasia is well known, often it does not manifest itself in any way and remains unnoticed until geneticists stumble upon it.

mtDNA is inherited only on the maternal line, so rare heteroplasmy (replacement of cytosine by thymine at position 16169) in DNA obtained from the remains of Nikolai's daughters could not be looked for. There was no mutant variant among Nikolai's living relatives on his mother's side - Countess Sheremetyeva (Sfiri) and the Duke of Fife.

However, over several generations, hyperplasia could simply “dissolve” if the offspring received from the mother only one of the two types of her mtDNA. So the absence of C / T16169 among modern aristocrats did not mean anything, especially since the investigation also had DNA from a closer relative. Nikolai's older brother George, who died suddenly in 1899, was buried at the same time and still rests in the Peter and Paul Cathedral. In 1994, he was exhumed for examination: the Grand Duke found the rarest "royal" heteroplasmy.

It was not possible to hide this burial. Too many people participated in the operation, casual spectators passed, and the icy water accumulated at the bottom did not even cover the bodies. A few grenades did nothing to bring down the frozen walls to fill the mine. They returned the next night, removed the bodies from the pit and tried to burn them again. Everything somehow did not work out: according to Mikhail Medvedev, a participant in the events, doused with gasoline, they “smoked, stank, hissed, but did not burn at all.” Loaded, taken to look for a new place.

At the same time, other specialists worked with geneticists. Using the methods of his famous teacher Mikhail Gerasimov, Sergei Nikitin reconstructed the faces of all nine victims from their skulls. Now they could be recognized: the life doctor Evgeny Botkin, the life chef Ivan Kharitonov, the emperor's valet Aloysius Trupp, the Empress's maid Anna Demidova - and they themselves, Nikolai, Alexandra, daughters Olga, Tatyana, Anastasia.

However, the absence of the remains of Mary and, most importantly, Alexei fed the most improbable rumors. On this subject, you can consult the Internet, which is chock-full of statements: "The Romanovs are a grandiose hoax." Some doubts were also expressed by fellow geneticists, although in fact their arguments turned out to be mostly unfounded.

Moscow, 11 September. The remains of the children of the royal dynasty of the Romanovs of St. Petersburg are already on October 18. Now the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria are buried in the State Archives of Russia. The royal relics have been here for 8 years, from the moment they were discovered near the main burial place of the family in the Sverdlovsk region. MIR 24 decided to recall the history of the royal burial and found out where the remains of the great Romanov dynasty are now.

On the night of July 16-17, 1918, after the execution of the royal family, their bodies were sent to Verkh-Isetsk, the current district of Yekaterinburg. Unsuccessful attempts to destroy the royal bodies led to the fact that the next morning the whole city knew about what had happened. The corpses thrown into the ice mine froze so much that they looked like they were alive. After that, it was decided to rebury the remains in the swampy area of ​​the Porosenkov Log.

Here, several bodies were buried right under the roadway, and the rest were doused with sulfuric acid, leaving them in the ground nearby. A year after these events, the forensic investigator Sokolov, who was sent in search of a burial place, found only one of the severed fingers in this area - the remains remained deep in the ground under the railroad tracks.

“Here is all that remains of the august family. Everything else was destroyed by the Bolsheviks with the help of fire and sulfuric acid, ”Sokolov explained then.

The remains were discovered only after 72 years. There were 9 bodies in the burial, the examination of which showed that the dead were from the Romanov dynasty. The remains of only two family members were not found in the grave: Tsarevich Alexei and Princess Mary. However, for many researchers, the results of a quick examination raised doubts, which is why the country was in no hurry to call the bodies authentic.

Entire legends circulated around the dynasty, sometimes confirming the death of family members, sometimes refuting it. Many believed that all members of the royal dynasty were not killed and were in Europe. Others suggested that the found burial had nothing to do with the royal family, and that the original remains were stored elsewhere. Still others suggested that only the children of the emperor, Alexei and Maria, managed to survive after the bloody night.

In order to achieve the truth in this matter, the case of establishing the authenticity of the remains was transferred to the Prosecutor General's Office. Given the significance of the case, the researchers, together with American and British scientists, conducted several examinations at once. To do this, DNA samples were taken from some relatives of the emperor, now living in Greece and Great Britain. The study showed that the found remains with a probability of 98.5% belong to members of the Romanov family.

After doubts about the authenticity were dispelled, in July 1998, representatives of the royal family were solemnly buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. However, despite this, discussions about the unfound bodies of Alexei and Maria continued.

Several times their "genuine" remains were found in different parts of the country, but the genetic examination each time showed that the bodies found had nothing to do with the royal dynasty.

The bodies of the imperial children were nevertheless found in the Sverdlovsk region. After numerous examinations that confirmed their authenticity, the remains were placed in the State Archives of the Russian Federation.

The place of burial was suggested by the document of the commandant of the house of special purpose, Yakov Yurovsky. Despite the fact that for a long time the note was not taken seriously, the place where the bodies of the Tsarevich and the princess were buried was indicated correctly in it.

However, despite the large number of examinations carried out both in Russia and abroad, the Russian Orthodox Church still does not recognize the authenticity of the remains found near Yekaterinburg. However, despite this position of the clergy, representatives of the Romanov dynasty agreed with the final verdict of the court and intend to attend the reburial ceremony in the Peter and Paul Fortress.