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The Escape of Alexei, Son of Tsar Nicholas II: What Happened the Night the Romanov Family Was Executed |
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Reviews |
Description:
You might argue that there's no point to this English-language edition of a Russian book, because only the most feverish Russian monarchist could take seriously, as a political issue, the question of whether the last Tsar's heir survived the Bolshevik massacre at Ekaterinburg. But this is a bit like saying that it doesn't matter how Amelia Earhart died: a mystery is a mystery, each with its own special claims on our attention. We know that Cheka thugs buried two fewer bodies than they fired at, and forensic evidence shows that if those two got away, they were almost certainly Nicholas's two youngest children, Anastasia and Alexei. There have been many Alexei pretenders in Russia, but none with so well-documented a claim as the one presented (a little breathlessly) here, on behalf of the schoolteacher Vasily Filatov, who died in 1984. Computerized facial matching says that he must be Alexei, and there is an enormous amount of other circumstantial evidence. Intriguing ... as, in a rubber-necking sort of way, is the forensically detailed reconstruction of what happened on the murderous night of July 16 to 17, 1918. But note that the relevant genetic information about Filatov has not been disclosed. Many experts, using just the methods emphasized here, were convinced beyond doubt that Anna Anderson must have been Alexei's sister Anastasia ... until DNA samples showed up. So caveat lector. What really drives this book is the series of grainy, haunting images of Filatov: was he just a peasant turned teacher, or did those deep, inscrutable eyes, which do look so very, very like the eyes of the young tsarevitch, hide for six decades a terrible story about crawling away from a pile of corpses? --Richard Farr
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