At last the mystery was beginning to unravel.
I've just got off the phone to the Von Kleist family,
who looked after her.
They have some new information.
It should help us know once and for all,
if she is who she says she is.
Of course.
Did Anastasia really escape
one of the most tragic events of recent times?
We were about to find out.
In May 1918...
a year after the revolution...
the Bolsheviks sent Anastasia, Alexei, Tatiana and Olga
to join the rest of the family in Ekaterinburg.
The city was a communist stronghold in the Urals,
surrounded by vast forests.
The kind of place political prisoners could easily disappear.
Come on. Down.
In Ekaterinburg, they're put in the Ipatiev mansion.
Move it!
And it's chosen because it's separate, it's guardable, it's fortifiable.
Come on, faster!
And It's given the name "The House of Special Purpose."
Can you imagine a more sinister name for a house
than "The House of Special Purpose?"
They should be here by now.
Where are they?
They must be through here.
They're here, they're here.
Come here.
Alexei!
Where is Mother?
She's not well, but she is desperate to see you.
- Now you must be tired after the journey. - Why are the windows like that?
This is a prison.
Not a hotel.
What does he mean?
Let's go and see your mother.
Mm? Okay.
Come on, come on.
Come here and give me a proper hug.
Ah!
Look at you.
Maria, could you close the door, please?
You must be so tired.
Mm no, not at all.
Now.
Remember, we are being watched all the time,
so be very careful what you say.
Don't provoke them,
and they'll leave you alone if you stick to the rules.
What rules?
Roll call every morning. One hour's exercise in the yard a day.
What?
No matter how hard things get,
we must keep our dignity.
Don't forget you're Grand Duchesses.
And this is temporary.
We won't be here long.
Maria, why don't you show your sisters their room?
Yes.
Up to this moment, they had kept their spirits relatively high,
that they were either going to be secretly sent abroad,
or rescued, essentially.
The room is along here.
Forget what Papa said. The guards aren't that bad.
Actually, some are quite nice.
This is where we sleep.
Comrade Goloshchyokin, we can't keep them here any longer.
The whole town seems to know who we have got locked up.
I can't do anything without the go-ahead from Moscow.
There are rumors they have allies planning to free them.
I'll make it very clear to Comrade Lenin.
The imperial family is in the power of the Ural Soviet Bolsheviks.
They're quite radical, even by Leninist standards
and they want to execute the royal family.
Keep a close eye on them.
Check up all security.
We cannot afford any fuck-up.
But there are different views
about what to do with the Romanovs.
Lenin is concerned that executing the imperial family
would make him look bad, that it would be a very unpopular move.
It is not that easy to overcome imperial tradition overnight
and just kill the Czar.
By the spring of 1918,
the Bolshevik hold on power in Russia is becoming very shaky.
There is a major famine, and the Bolshevik solution
is to requisition food from farmers, which becomes very unpopular.
The Bolsheviks have signed the Brest-Litovsk treaty with Germany.
A lot of European Russia is lost
and Lenin starts losing support for his betrayal of Russia.
Revolution changes into civil war.
White armies are formed by former Czarist officers and generals,
and challenge the Bolshevik hold on power.
And furthermore, foreign interventions start.
Britain and France send substantial armies
to fight against the Bolsheviks, to try to restore
the republican and/or Imperial regime, and bring Russia back into World War One.
It looks quite possible that the whole Bolshevik regime
won't even survive.
And the one thing they don't want to happen
is for the Romanovs to become a banner of their enemies.
Oh Christ, God,
bless the food and drink of thy servants.
For holy art thou, always, now and ever,
and unto the ages of ages.
Amen.
Cutlets again?
It's cutlets every night. Can't we have something else?
Elbows down.
Just be grateful for what we have...
Girls.
- Is he drunk? - Sh.
There you are.
Mother, I don't have a fork.
Use your fingers.
- How dare you talk to us like that? - Lexi!
Look, please, there's no need...
Come on. Let's go.
Let's go.
It's alright...
- it's alright. - Don't look at him like that.
Let's just get back to dinner.
Here, take mine.
Who'd like a game of Bezique tonight?
- I'll play. - Me too.
- Whose turn is it to win? - Not yours!
"The friends of the Romanovs are no longer sleeping.
The hour so long awaited has come.
The Czechs are approaching Ekaterinburg and will force the Red Army to capitulate.
Be ready at all times for liberation."
Signed, "Someone who's ready to die for you.
Officer of the Russian army."
In the summer of 1918, the family begins to receive
mysterious communications.
These are letters that assure them
that they still have friends on the outside, so to speak,
and that they need to wait for a signal
and then attempt an escape.
They do not suspect that these letters are actually written
by the Urals Bolsheviks
in an attempt to lure the family out of the house.
They are trying to trick them
into an escape in which they could be killed.
When the Romanovs left the Alexander Palace
they managed to take their hidden cache of jewelry with them,
as an insurance policy to live off if they went into exile
and to pay for any escape that needed paying for.
So they need to hide the jewels.
From now on, you'll wear these under your clothes at all times.
Why?
We need to be ready to leave at any moment.
- To go where? - Quick!
Happy birthday!
Thank you.
Within the house, things are getting lax.
Imagine, you've got these very pretty teenage girls
and they've never really had contact with young men before.
What did you wish for?
I'm not telling, or it might not come true.
Suddenly there are all these young Bolshevik guards
flirting with them.
Maria.
Yes.
Particularly Maria.
Her eyes always known as "Maria's saucers".
Comrade Goloshchyokin.
Speaking.
Security at the house is compromised.
Some of the guards are getting too close to the girls.
How bad is it?
If we don't do something soon,
they will be the ones helping them escape.
Really?
You need to come and see for yourself.
Stay where you are.
Turn everything upside down!
- You can't do... - You stay here!
Nicky!
When the Bolshevik leaders arrive to inspect,
they are absolutely ruthless.
When I say everywhere, I mean everywhere!
They are fanatical Marxists.
They hate Nicholas, they hate the Romanov family.
They regard them as criminals, bloodsuckers.
Give it back!
Sh, don't.
Or what?
What is this?
An inspection.
Cooperate, and no one gets hurt.
Where is the fourth girl?
Right, search the rooms!
They believe in terror...
as a revolutionary weapon.
Check that room, down there.
Lord have mercy on our souls.
Lord have mercy on our souls. Protect and guard us.
Left, check all the rooms.
Protect and guard our souls from the hands of evil, oh Lord.
Lord have mercy on our souls.
Get out!
I said get out!
No. Please, please, no, stop!
Stop!
No!
No, no!
By July 1918,
the Ural Bolsheviks are getting more and more concerned
about the imperial family, and how secure they are.
On the one hand, there's been a kind of breakdown of order
within the house itself.
On the other hand, the war isn't going that well for the Reds.
In fact, the White Army is getting closer and closer to Ekaterinburg.
And so the very real threat
that the imperial family might be rescued is ever more apparent.
Lenin agrees that if the Whites get close
then he gives the permission for the Ural Bolsheviks to kill them all.
The action agreed upon cannot be put off.
Stop.
We cannot wait.
Stop.
Ifyour opinion differs...
then immediately notify.
Stop.
Yurovsky takes personal control.
He sacks all the lax guards, he tightens the schedule,
and he brings in new, tougher, more hostile guards.
This does not bode well for the family.
Your new commander, Yakov Yurovsky.
From now on the rules will be strictly enforced.
No fraternizing with guards.
Comply and you will be safe.
Any attempt at escape
will be severely punished.
What's going to happen to us?
We'll get out of here.
And go where?
I don't know.
We might have to leave Russia.
You told me, God chose me to be Czar.
He did.
So why has he let this happen?
Maybe... he's testing us.
Maybe it's all part of his plan.
One has to try to imagine
the psychological pressure on a man
who was convinced that he was anointed by God.
He knows he's failed in his role
as God's representative on Earth,
that he has brought about this crisis.
And now he has to worry about Alexei, his handicapped son,
what will become of him.
This is the ultimate nightmare.
How does he protect him from the Bolsheviks?
You wanted to see me.
Yes, I need to know what you're planning to do with us.
I'm waiting for instructions from the general committee.
I see.
How long is that going to take?
My son is unwell.
We need to get him proper medical attention.
And my wife has asked to see a priest.
That is not up to me.
But you could report to the...
They are fully aware of the situation.
I have never met people like you.
I hope I never will again.
But, you and I have met.
In a manner of speaking.
1891...
I was ten.
You were completing your Far East tour.
You stopped in Tomsk.
Beautiful day, perfect weather.
I was happy.
We all got the day off from school.
Please.
Thank you.
I remember I was with all my friends.
My family.
I had a little flag.
I was waving it.
Just one of the little ants
you were nodding and waving at.
Of course.
You don't remember.
There were millions of us.
And one of you.
I know what you think of me.
I tried to be a good Czar.
Everything I did, I did for my country.
What did you do for the people?
Russia is the people.
Did you ever realize that?
Was there anything else?
By this point, the Bolshevik government
is in serious danger.
It has lost a great deal of Russia
and an uprising has just occurred in Moscow.
Different armies are converging from every side
on a shrinking Bolshevik heartland.
The White Forces are just 20 miles from Ekaterinburg.
It is a very serious possibility
that they will take the city and liberate the Romanovs.
The Romanovs can actually hear guns
at the front, booming away.
That's how close the war is getting.
And, of course, they don't realize that the closer the war gets,
the more danger they're in.
Thank you.
This is a great comfort to us.
Of course.
I spoke to Comrade Lenin.
We have the go-ahead for our operations.
Good.
Here is good.
The trucks will come to the house.
Be ready to leave, 01:30 hours.
It's getting nearer.
What's going to happen to us, Nicky?
Do you remember Livadia in the spring?
And the cherry blossom?
I'm going to take you back there.
When this madness is over.
Just you and I.
I would love that.
I love you.
I love you too.
- What's happening? - It's alright.
There's a fight for the city.
We need to move you all, for your own safety.
Let the children know.
We need them dressed and ready as soon as possible.
On the night that they're woken up,
the first thing they do is to pull on their diamond-encrusted underwear.
Quickly, girls.
Where are they taking us?
Crimea?
Who knows?
The important thing is, we're finally moving on.
Hurry, girls.
The fact that they're wearing their bejeweled vests
shows that for the children at least, they had a great hope
that somehow they would survive this.
It was unthinkable that anything would happen to the children.
Ready?
Okay, please.
My men will take these.
Okay.
Okay, let's go.
Do everything they tell you to. We don't want to be split up again.
- I thought we were heading... - Wait here until your transport is ready.
They're brought into the cellar.
They're confused. It's the middle of the night.
Could I have some chairs for my son and wife, please?
Of course.
You have been drinking.
Start the lorries.
That's our transport.
For a second, it looks a bit like
a family photograph's about to be taken.
They're gathered around the two seated at the front.
But in fact, things are getting darker and darker
in the "House of Special Purpose".
Nikolai Alexandrovich,
Alexandra Feodorovna,
Alexei Nikolayevich,
Olga Nikolaevna,
Maria Nikolaevna,
Tatiana Nikolaevna,
Anastasia Nikolaevna.
The Ural Regional Soviet Committee has sentenced you to death.
But...
I don't understand.
You have been sentenced to death.
Finish it!
Shoot! Fucking shoot!
One of the most tragic aspects of the murder of the Russian imperial family
is that because they were wearing so many jewels sewn into their clothes...
it was harder to kill them.
They were essentially wearing the world's most expensive bulletproof vests.
Stop firing.
In all of history,
it's hard to imagine an act that was so utterly barbarous
than the messy slaughter of the imperial family.
I don't know how to break this to them.
The Von Kleists told me, a few months ago,
they and Anna had dinner with a Russian army officer
who was based at the Alexander Palace.
He told her about the nickname "Pixie."
Then there is this.
She's been practicing for months.
She's an imposter.
She's still my patient.
And she's in a very fragile condition.
I think it's best you don't tell her about your discovery.
Wait here.
Excuse me.
I think it's best for you to come outside.
I have inside here, page upon page upon page
of her attempting to practice the signature of Anastasia.
The resemblance is not there.
Our instincts were right.
There is irrefutable evidence inside here
that she is not the...
Are you leaving me?
We'll write to you, I promise.
I'm so glad we met.
No, don't go. Please.
Please.
We're not leaving you.
We will see each other again.
Goodbye...
Anastasia.
It had been too much to ask for.
Nobody could have escaped that massacre.
The real Anastasia was almost certainly resting somewhere
with her family.
That was my only consolation.
At the same time as the imperial family is killed
in "The House of Special Purpose,"
The Bolsheviks try to eliminate all of the Romanovs under their control.
They execute a total of 18 members of the imperial family.
They throw Alex's sister, Ella,
down a mine shaft,
and then they throw grenades on top of her.
She was heard singing hymns from down the mine
before everything went quiet.
But many of the Romanovs did get out.
Minny, the last Czar's mother...
Nikolasha, his supreme commander...
And "The Black Crows."
Their last great act is their escape, from the Crimea,
aboard a British battleship, HMS Marlborough,
as the Bolsheviks are pouring into the Crimea.
Also on board is Prince Felix Yusupov,
the man that masterminded the assassination of Rasputin.
About a week after the imperial family is killed
the anti-Bolshevik powers take Ekaterinburg.
They try to figure out what happened to the royal family.
Pierre Gilliard travels to Ekaterinburg.
He sees "The House of Special Purpose" for himself.
He sees the cellar riddled with bullets.
Shoot!
And tries to help find the bodies
of the slaughtered royal family.
In the Koptyaki woods near Ekaterinburg
the investigation finds remnants of bones, but only fragments.
They do not find bodies that would prove the deaths
of all of the members of the imperial family.
As the Red Army nears victory in the civil war
the anti-Bolshevik forces have to flee Ekaterinburg
and they cannot finish the investigation.
The Bolsheviks announce the execution of Nicholas II,
but they do not say anything about the fate of the family.
They understood it would be a public relations disaster
to admit the innocent children had all been massacred.
And so they deliberately spread mystery over the story.
About the same time as the Soviet Unionis formed,
rumors that one of the Grand Duchesses has escaped start circulating.
One of the claimants is a young woman, later to be known as Anna Anderson,
and she appears in Berlin.
Anastasia's Auntie Olga and Pierre Gilliard
conclude that Anna Anderson is a fraud.
Goodbye.
And yet the young woman continues to claim
that she is the Grand Duchess Anastasia for several decades afterwards.
You can believe it, or you don't believe it.
It doesn't matter.
DNA testing does not exist at this time,
and so it is very, very difficult to conclusively prove
that she is or isn't Princess Anastasia.
In 1979, two amateur historians find a number of bodies
in the woods outside of Ekaterinburg
that might be the bodies of the slaughtered imperial family.
But 1979 is much too early in terms of Soviet history
for anyone to accept finding the bodies.
They were reburied.
And it was only with the fall of the Soviet Union, in 1991,
that the bodies were re-exhumed.
DNA testing was possible on them with modern science,
and members of the wider royal family of Europe,
including Prince Philip, the Duke of Edinburgh,
gave blood to enable the tests to be made.
The bones found in Ekaterinburg three years ago
beyond any reasonable doubt
are the remains of Czar Nicholas II
and members of his family.
They test the remains of the imperial family
against the remains of Anna Anderson and they find that conclusively
she was not a member of the Romanov family.
In fact, not even vaguely related.
Franziska Schanzkowska was the real name of Anna Anderson.
She was a Polish factory worker who was declared insane
and went missing in 1920.
In 1998,
President Yeltsin presided over the reburial
of Nicholas and the imperial family
in the Peter and Paul Cathedral,
the ancestral tomb of the Romanov dynasty.
But two bodies were missing.
In 2007,
the last two bodies of the imperial family are found
in the woods outside Ekaterinburg.
Scientists, archaeologists, historians believe
that these are the remains
of Alexei and his sister Maria.
These remains still await burial today.
*CREDITS*