In childhood the grand duchesses came up with ОТМА [Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia] as a sign of sibling closeness and affection for one another, writing it in their diaries. The girls were great granddaughters of Queen Victoria and, although "thoroughly Russian," grew up speaking both Russian and English fluently among themselves. Whilst the family was in captivity after the Russian Revolution of 1917 they were allowed to send few letters so the sisters often signed this nickname on cards they had written together for loved ones and friends.I can't look at the photo without thinking of how the bullets were said to have richocheted off the jewels hidden in their clothing when they were executed.
From the Flickr photostream of Art & Vintage, via Sloth Unleashed.
Y'know what I hate?
ReplyDeleteThe animated "Anastasia" movie.
So. Many. Things. Wrong.
At least pronounce her name right!
How beautiful. And so tragic.
ReplyDeleteI can't look at them without thinking of my great-grandfather, whose earliest memory is of a pogrom ordered by their father.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to dredge up sympathy for the children of a mass murderer. Really, really hard.
In a lot of areas it seemed that Nicholas really wanted to do the best he could, he just foolishly listened to his ministers and relied on their "expertise." Lots of immediate repentance is written in his diary, even for events attributed to him though he had no direct involvement. Not to say that the man didn't invariably cause the deaths of many, but I don't think he was quite the cold-blooded murderer Anon1 takes him for. Nicholas II never ordered a single pogrom and in fact tried to prevent them. He certainly grew up anti-semitic, but there are many scholars who think that that belief greatly lessened over the course of his reign.
ReplyDeleteNevertheless, we don't sentence the death of all murderer's children nowadays, do we? They had nothing to do with it and it's always sad to see photos of them.
Yes, Tzar Nicholas came across as an amiable man, without an inkling of hatred in his good-natured face. I agree with you and do not believe that he ordered any pogroms. His daughters are the complete portrayal of a peaceful bucolic life, all beautiful and innocent. What a tragedy.
DeleteI believe he was a good man, and he raised his children to be amiable as he was. He was not a man of war, and because of that was manipulated by people near to him with hunger for power. Indeed, he was a very rich man, but acted as if he was not, attested this fact by how he allowed a humble man to enter his household in order to stop his son's bleeding caused by the hemophilia. Very tragic outcome of this family.
DeleteThat is a BEAUTIFUL photo!
ReplyDeleteMany in the West are not aware that the whole royal family -- Tsar Nicholas, Tsaritsa Alexandra and their five children -- are all canonized saints in the Russian Orthodox Church. After the collapse of the USSR, a great deal of information has been published about the royal, including diaries, which gives a very different picture of the family than that depicted in movies and such. They actually led quite an austere lifestyle: sleeping on cots, cold showers, and adhering to Orthodox fasting practices, which means a vegan dietary for half the year.
ReplyDeleteThank you, anon. I hadn't realized that myself.
ReplyDeleteYou're looking at an image of young women executed by communist murderers and you can think about are the jewels supposedly hidden in their clothes. That's a very stupid thing to say, as if spending a long time in the hands of communist thugs would have allowed the Romanovs to hide anything away. The only thing they could have gotten away with was their lives... the Bolsheviks saw to it that they did not.
ReplyDeleteActually they did have jewels sewn into their dresses- lots of jewels. The Bolsheviks did not know this until they checked to see why so many of the bayonet thrusts were not penetrating the bodies. Anon, please check your facts before you write something.
DeleteAnon, re your comment - "...the jewels supposedly hidden in their clothes. That's a very stupid thing to say, as if spending a long time in the hands of communist thugs would have allowed the Romanovs to hide anything away..."
ReplyDeleteThis is from the Smithsonian magazine (http://www.smithsonianmag.com/people-places/Resurrecting-the-Czar.html):
"A ten-man execution squad entered the room. Their leader, Yakov Yurovsky, pronounced a death sentence. Nicholas uttered his last words—“What?” or “You know not what you do” (accounts differ)—and the squad opened fire. The shots instantly killed the czar, but some bullets failed to penetrate his daughters’ jewel-encrusted corsets. The young women were dispatched with bayonets and pistols."
I'm not as stupid as you seem to think I am.
Minnesotastan did not say that he could think only of the bullets richocheting, simply that he thought of the statement from Smithsonian, and repeated elsewhere. And what is stupid about it? Had he said that it was the only thing or all that he could think of, the statement could be considered shallow or callous, but not stupid. But he didn't say that.
ReplyDeleteAnd what is the relevance of saying that the communists would not have allowed the family to get away with the jewels? Criticizing the blog's author and then saying this is stupidity. Whether or not the family would have gotten away with the jewels has no bearing on what actually happened.
CCL
And when Stalin and the communists were done with their killings, over 20 million russian people lay dead - now that is true blood-thirsty murder.
ReplyDeleteOh my god justice can never survive i mean to say who will ever think of murdering beautiful and gorgeous girls like this. Assasination of nicholas 2 and his family was brutality to its extent :(
ReplyDeleteThanks yo God, they lives inside of my family hearts.
ReplyDeleteVery sad. They were beautiful and innocent.
ReplyDelete