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She was killed in 1918, she was rumored to be alive for decades, her body was found in 1979, and she was announced dead in 1991. This is what Anastasia would’ve seen throughout the Russian Revolution if she had survived.

Introduction

The Russian Revolution was a transformative point in Russia’s history and European history as a whole. For centuries, western Europe viewed Russia as a backwards, undeveloped country; the revolution finally brought everyone’s eyes and attention to Russia as it became the very first communist nation in the entire world. Spanning from 1917 to 1923, it took a mere 6 years to set the country on an entirely new path with an unpredictable future. Despite Russia changing drastically, is its new government truly different from its history of emperors?

Causes

Before Anastasia’s Time

Crimean War

The Russian emperor Tsar Nicholas I lost admiration and respect from most of his population in his attempt to expand his nation into the Black Sea and Constantinople. His efforts started the Crimean War which devastated Russia and became a cause of the Russian Revolution. To put it simply, Great Britain noticed Russia trying to grow its empire and decided to cut them off by helping the Ottomans who controlled the area Nicholas was invading. Britain’s funding and military helped the Ottomans win this war. The Russian army – full of impoverished people with no choice or proper preparation and materials – were furious when the tsar blamed them for the loss of the war. This anger fueled their later revolts.

Serfdom

Serfdom is the system of keeping farmers (aka most of Russia’s population) bound to the land of wealthy landowners who often abused the serfs. This practice was abandoned by most western European nations in the Middle Ages yet continued to exist in Russia until 1861. Serfdom even prevented industrializing and modernizing because the landowners were afraid that if trains were built the serfs would escape. After 1861, the new freedom of the serfs was not enough to make up for the centuries of torture they had endured, and they began to organize and plan even more revolts.

Anastasia at 3

Russo-Japanese War

The Russo-Japanese War was the last hit the Russian Empire took before finally deciding to industrialize. Russia expanded east into Manchuria (area above Korea) to set up more ports. Japan feared that Russia would take over Korea which Japan held influence over; to prevent that from happening they waged war. As a toddler, Anastasia watched her royal relatives confidently enter a war against a nation they did not know much about. All of Europe watched the war assuming that the Russian empire would dominate because of its age and experience. Surprisingly, the young nation – Japan – defeated Russia with ease. This was mainly because Japan had incredibly strong, efficient military technology. The Russian citizens were angry again, and the royals were embarrassed at their own loss.

Anastasia at 9

Industrialization & Starvation

After the Russo-Japanese War, the Russian empire finally began to industrialize under the leadership of Alexander II and Sergei Witte. Anastasia grew to be a gifted and bright student as factories were built and cities like St. Petersburg and Moscow doubled in size in just 10 years. Sadly, Russia’s new reforms and improvements did not guarantee a better quality of life for its citizens. Industrialized cities became overcrowded and highly unsanitary; the sudden increase in population also created a large need for resources. Those needs could not be met as Russia suffered a period of bad harvests. Hundreds of thousands of people died due to starvation, and Russia sank back into a state of poverty; on the other side, Anastasia and the royal family thrived in their lavish living. The horrible timing of industrialization came back to haunt the country because nothing makes people want to revolt more than hunger.

Anastasia at 13

World War I

Anastasia had just become a teenager when the largest war seen in history broke out. World War I was yet another cause of the Russian Revolution because people could not stand the idea of being sent into a war unprepared and underfunded and still being expected to win. The people were so unmotivated and pessimistic that even Anastasia’s father – Tsar Nicholas II – riding onto the battlefield with the Russian troops could not give them any semblance of hope or willpower.

Russian Revolution

Anastasia at 15

February Revolution

All of the events listed above led up to this event: the February Revolution. People stormed into the streets demanding food and solutions to all their struggles. The tensions heightened when the rebels detained the royal family. Nicholas II was forced to abdicate from the throne, and he became the very last tsar of Russia. Anastasia and the rest of the royal family are shot and killed by rebels. After the Romanovs, the Russians don’t know who is going to lead them. A temporary government called the Provisional Government is set up with the hope that a new one will be created while multiple groups start fighting for control and power. The rebels claimed that everyone in the royal family was killed, but since certain bodies could not be found many people believed that Anastasia was still alive. The citizens were hoping that Anastasia would someday be found and could be restored to her rightful place in power. Although the citizens planned the assassination of the royals, they were still terrified of the chaos that occurred as its consequence. The truth – which would not be uncovered until the collapse of the Soviet Union – was that some of the dead royals were thrown into a mineshaft after they were shot.

Anastasia at 16

Bolshevik Revolution

Next, if Anastasia had truly survived, she would have witnessed yet another form of government being toppled by rebels. The Provisional Government refused to take Russia out of World War I to maintain prestige and a reputation. Because of their actions which led to the deaths of thousands more, the rebels took to the streets once again asking for justice. This time, they banded into groups and cooperated. Councils were set up consisting of lower class people allowing them to express their opinions, and they began asking for a stake in government decisions. These groups combined under the leadership of Lenin and became known as the Bolsheviks. Lenin promised to set up a communist regime in his April Theses which had three main parts: the saying “Peace, Land, and Bread”, worker control of production rather than nobles, and all government power to the soviets (communists in Russia). Basically, the people would have more say in the government and power over their jobs; all wealth would also be divided equally amongst all citizens of Russia. Anastasia would have wished that her parents had put enough reform in place to prevent all of this. In the end, the Bolsheviks were successful in overthrowing the Provisional Government, but Russia’s problems did not end there.

Anastasia at 17

Russian Civil War

Lenin and the communists taking control of Russia caused quite the stir and made very many people unhappy. For example, the rich landowners were greedy and did not want to share their wealth, the leaders of western European nations were terrified that Lenin’s radical ideas would spread to their nations as well, and not everyone agreed with Lenin in the sense that communism would be the right way to go. A civil war broke out in Russia with the communists on one side and everyone else on the other side. The communists were called the Reds while the others were called Whites throughout the duration of this war. Although western nations including Great Britain and the United States of America sent aid to the non-communists in Russia, most of their inventory was depleted by World War I, and they could not help the Whites enough to succeed. The Red Army was also far more united than the loosely connected White Army. All of this led to the Reds eventually winning the Russian Civil War and a communist government being set up in Russia. Anastasia would have turned 17 as the civil war began, and almost all of her memories of home would now be of a divided and torn apart nation.

Anastasia at 21

Soviet Union

The end of the Russian Civil War also marked the creation of the USSR (aka the Soviet Union). The unfortunate truth of communism is that it was meant to be implemented in Great Britain – or another hugely wealthy nation that already went through the process of industrialization. In Russia where almost everyone is equally poor, there was not much wealth to go around, and people’s lives did not improve in the slightest. Rather, Lenin and the rest of the money-minded government officials took a large portion of all of the money in Russia and left everyone else with barely enough to survive. Lenin was just another corrupt politician, and he used communism almost like a brand to gain control over the entire country. In the end, Lenin had a small amount of goodness in his heart and attempted to bring about reform, but it failed miserably. He was forced to mix in aspects of capitalism (the opposite of communism) in his New Economic Policy to grow the economy, industrialize the cities, and improve agricultural gains. Anastasia would have been devastated at the state of her beloved country but also amused at the fact that Russia ended up trading an emperor for a dictator.

Conclusion

The Russian Revolution took Russia from the rule of an empire into the hands of a so-called communist. Although Anastasia returning was an impossible thing to hope for, people hoped nonetheless throughout the course of the revolution.

Why is this Important?

The word revolution has another meaning: to orbit around a round object fully, or to put it simply it means to go full circle. Similarly, violent revolutions are not at all rare in history and even continue to happen today, but no revolution that starts with violence will ever end with anything but more violence. Although Anastasia died early on, she lived on in the minds of everyone that knew that violence could never solve anything. This is the story of Anastasia and everyone that dreamt of a peaceful future during the revolution. Remember, everyone has a story to tell.