Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna of Russia (18 June [O.S. 5 June] 1901 – 17 July 1918) was the youngest offspring of Tsar Nicholas II, the final ruler of Imperial Russia, and Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna. Her life came to a tragic end alongside her family during a tumultuous period in Russian history, as they were executed by Bolsheviks in a cellar after being imprisoned following the October Revolution. The exact date of the killings is debated, but most accounts place it on July 17, 1918.
In the aftermath of her family's execution, numerous women surfaced, claiming to be Anastasia and asserting they had survived the massacre. Among these was Anna Anderson, who garnered significant attention and controversy, with skeptics suggesting she was actually Franziska Schanzkowska, a Polish woman. Anderson, who married American history professor J.E. Manahan in 1968, spent her later years in Virginia and passed away in 1984. Her attempts to prove her identity and claim a share of the Romanov fortune were ultimately dismissed by West German courts in 1970, leading to the remaining imperial assets being awarded to the Duchess of Mecklenburg.
In the 1990s, DNA tests on Anderson and the remains of the Romanov family, discovered by Russian scientists in 1976 but kept confidential until after the Soviet Union's fall, confirmed that Anastasia had indeed perished with her family in 1918, solidifying the tragic fate of the last Russian imperial family.
