THE SECRET PLOT TO SAVE THE TSAR

Did the last Romanov tsar and tsarina and their royal brood fall to Bolshevik bullets? History books say yes. This drab tale says no—or, well, maybe not.

It is incontrovertibly true that Red soldiers held the tsar and his family prisoner in a provincial town in the Urals, admits historical researcher and political consultant McNeal. It is also true that various military elements, including White Russian anti-Bolsheviks and Czech, British, and even American expeditionary forces, had it in mind to liberate the royals while purging Siberia of Communists. The standard histories say that the Bolsheviks, made nervous by the advance of these counter-revolutionary forces, executed the royals and dumped their remains in the forest outside Ekaterinburg, where, in 1979, a crew of Soviet archaeologists turned up bones later identified as those of the tsar, his wife, their sons and daughters, and even the family dog. McNeal disputes the validity of the archaeologists’ findings and subsequent DNA tests. Instead, among other richly speculative scenarios, she posits that agents of the British and American governments, working through members of the Russian Orthodox clergy and representatives of the Leninist government, managed to free the tsar and spirit him and his family off to internal exile, leaving it to the Bolsheviks to put out the cover story that the family had been executed—and allowing them the possibility of producing the royal family should there have been a massive public outcry against the supposed murder. Among the evidence McNeal produces is this tidbit: “The Marchioness of Milford Haven, one of the Tsarina’s sisters, wrote that the Dowager Empress had told her that the family was hidden in the far north of Russia, which could only be reached in summer.” The other bits and pieces of evidence are about as definitive, none of them the necessary smoking gun.

An unconvincing effort, of interest to those who’ve seen Anastasia walking alongside Elvis on the streets of Paris.