
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: FRIDAY, September 9, 1994                   TAG: 9409090082
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: B-3   EDITION: STATE 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: CHARLOTTESVILLE                                 LENGTH: Medium

AUTHOR SAYS ANASTASIA IDENTIFICATION MOTIVATED BY RUSSIAN NATIONALISM

A Russian government panel's conclusion that Czar Nicholas II's youngest daughter was killed when the Bolsheviks executed the royal family was driven by Russian nationalism, a biographer says.

Grand Duchess Anastasia's fate has been a subject of speculation for more than 75 years. Some claimed the 17-year-old girl survived the 1918 assassinations and escaped abroad.

In a report released Tuesday, the Russian panel said the combined findings of British and Russian scientists showed ``definite proof'' that one of the skeletons found in a pit outside Yekaterinburg in 1991 belonged to Anastasia.

Authorities still have not found the remains of Anastasia's brother, Alexei, or sister, Maria, according to the Russian panel's report.

Peter Kurth, author of ``Anastasia: The Riddle of Anna Anderson,'' said it is obvious that authorities in Moscow will never accept the possibility that Anastasia survived.

``The Russians are resentful of the West's involvement in this story,'' Kurth said. ``They want to reclaim their history. They will have their own mystery princess. The pride of Russia is at stake.''

Kurth has written extensively about Anna Anderson Manahan, the most famous of the many people who claimed to be Anastasia. Manahan lived in Charlottesville from 1968 until her death in 1984.

Kurth said he will put more stock in the findings of a British laboratory that identified the family's bones and which is now comparing a sample of Manahan's intestinal tissue to the Romanov family's remains.

Richard Schweitzer, a Great Falls lawyer whose wife is the granddaughter of the czar's personal doctor, also said he is unimpressed with the latest Russian report. He questioned whether the Russians used proper information in determining that Anastasia was buried with her family.

Schweitzer is paying for the ongoing British laboratory tests of Manahan's tissue.

Robert K. Massie, author of ``Nicholas and Alexandra,'' agreed with Kurth and Schweitzer that the Russians don't want to reject the findings of one of their leading scientists in favor of an American's.

Besides, Kurth said, the bottom line is that the Russians don't want to believe that Anastasia survived.

by CNB