The Romanov Dynasty

Fall of the Romanov Dynasty

There are a lot of things that we don’t learn about in history class anymore. From the hundreds of centuries of history, we don’t have enough time to learn all of the topics about events in the world. It’s not an opinion; it’s just an unfortunate fact. If we were to study every event in history, we would be in high school for much longer than four years. This paper isn’t meant to talk about not having time for every story though. Instead, this paper is just giving people the chance to learn a little about one of those stories we don’t hear about: the Romanov family and what the big mystery was surrounding their deaths. Very few truly knew of the fate of the Romanov family for about 70 years, until mass graves were

A revolution was sparked, and led to the abdication of Nicholas II. When he abdicated, meaning he renounced the throne, he hoped his brother would rule until Alexei, Nicholas II’s son, would be old enough to take over. When Nicholas II’s brother refused to take the throne, the power was turned over to the Provisional Government. The government soon became chaos, with people splitting into different sides. The Bolsheviks, a group led by Vladimir Lenin and Alexander Bogdanov, rose to power. This group believed in militant communism and made empty promises to the Russians. When their promises allowed them to gain more popularity than the constitutionally democratic group of Kerensky, they overthrew them. (Trueman) The Bolsheviks took complete control and arrested the immediate family of Nicholas II. The family and servants that were willing to go with them were exiled to Siberia, where they were held captive for a year. After an escape attempt led by Vassili Vassilievich Jakolev, the parents were moved to Ekaterinberg, and the children sent there shortly after. This was to be the final home for the family.

Various jewels, corsets, and other items confirmed that the bodies were those of the Romanovs. While the bodies of Anastasia and Alexei weren’t in that grave, a second grave, containing what is believed to be those two, was found by amateur archaeologists in 2007. Mitochondrial DNA testing along with autosomal STR and Y-STR testing confirmed that the two bodies in the second grave were of the Romanov family. (Coble)

These are just the events of one family that lived in the early 20th century. While they might not be important to today’s culture, they were still a royal family that ruled over a major country of today. So while you might not care what happened over a hundred years ago, you might have a better understanding of why Russia is the way it is today. Maybe you can realize how much (or little) the type of government a country has will change the way it works. And hopefully you learned a little bit more about events from World War