THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, December 3, 1995 TAG: 9512040186
SECTION: COMMENTARY PAGE: J2 EDITION: FINAL
TYPE: Book Review
SOURCE: BY JOHN A. FAHEY
LENGTH: Medium: 74 lines
THE ROMANOVS
The Final Chapter
ROBERT K. MASSIE
Random House. 308 pp. $25.
Pulitzer Prize winner Robert K. Massie again probes into the lives and deaths of the Romanovs, the last imperial Russian family. While his latest effort, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, does not match the master storytelling in his classic best seller, Nicholas and Alexandra, Massie spins a yarn equal to the genre of a mystery writer.
Three years ago, in his The Last Tsar, prominent Russian historian Edvard Radzinsky described the grisly murders of the Romanovs on July 16, 1918 in the cellar of the Ipatiev House in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg, and the exhumation of the remains on July 11, 1991 from a shallow grave. Massie repeats Radzinsky's revelations and moves quickly to his story about the identification of the victims.
Since in most criminal cases today the victims are known, the use of DNA usually focuses on the identity of the killer. The reverse transpired in the murder of the Romanov family. Not only were the killers known, but they fought among themselves for recognition as the executioner who fired the bullet that killed the tsar. DNA was used to identify the bodies. Sadly, forensic experts scrapped like junkyard dogs over the Romanovs' bones to be first in establishing identities.
Dr. William Maples, a University of Florida forensic anthropologist, worked on behalf of the city of Ekaterinburg. Dr. Peter Gill, a director of the Britain Home Office Forensic Science Service, joined forces with Russian Federation scientist Pavel Ivanov. Both Maples and Gill became bitter antagonists as did Ekaterinburg and the Russian Federation. Ekaterinburg wants to keep the bones to make the Ural city a future tourist attraction. The Russian Federation views the bones in a broader historical perspective and prefers St. Petersburg.
Maples was at a disadvantage. He lacked a Russian scientific colleague, spoke no Russian and apparently never understood Russian environs. On one Aeroflot flight, a dog running up and down the aisle irritated his American team. On the arrival at the Moscow airport shoving and shouting distressed them. Seasoned Aeroflot travelers have taken far more bizarre events in stride. Ultimately Gill triumphs over Maples in the DNA rush to judgment.
One third of Massie's book is devoted to the mystery of Charlottesville's Anna Anderson Manahan, who claimed to be the youngest Romanov daughter, Anastasia. The author walks the reader through minute details of Manahan's life. Virginians can take great pride in the performance of Marina and Richard Schweitzer, who won a single-handed court battle against a 250-member national law firm to release the claimant's tissue to Gill. But the Schweitzers, who firmly believed that Manahan was Anastasia, were chagrined to learn that DNA tests found her to be from peasant origins rather than from royal stock.
Despite the title of Massie's book, the last chapter has not been written. The skulls and bones of Nicholas, Alexandra and their children, except those of Anastasia and the young Tsarevich Alexis, whose remains were never recovered, lie on metal tables in a tiny room on the second floor of the Ekaterinburg morgue. A bitter fight continued about their final disposition until the Russian government announced in early October that the remains are to be buried in the former imperial capital of St. Petersburg on Feb. 25, 1996.
As the curtain falls on the Romanov tragedy, one can only hope that the last line of the final record will read, ``The Romanovs rest in peace.'' MEMO: John A. Fahey is an associate professor emeritus of foreign languages
and literature at Old Dominion University. by CNB