This is one of two films on YFA Online made as part of the Goole Silent Movie Project.  The project started in October 2006, with local young people between the ages of 13 and 20, co-ordinated by Goole Town Council. With the help of outside professionals, all the writing, acting, directing, filming, animation, editing, and research for the films, was undertaken by this committed group of young people.  For more on the origins and work of the project see the Context for the first film, Dr A. D. Holmes.  Whilst the other film is based on a real person from Goole, Dr Home, "The Lost Princess" is a fictional story that nevertheless has its roots in Goole’s heritage as an international port – one where many refugees have arrived.

 

The film is based on the life of a real person, Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov, the youngest daughter of the Tsar Nicholas II and Russian Royal Romanov family. The Romanov family were arrested and detained at the Alenser Palace after the February Revolution, in 1917, that brought in a Provisional Government under Alexander Kerensky. For safe keeping they were moved to Tobolsk in Siberia, and then again to Ipatiev House at Ekaterinburg (or Yekaterinburg), in the Ural Mountains, when the Bolsheviks came to power in October 1917. It was here that the Russian Emperor and Empress and their five children, and four servants, were executed on the night of July 16-17, 1918. A similar fate befell more members of the Royal family the following day. An account of the execution is given by the head of the Ekaterinburg Cheka, Yurovskii, who carried out the execution, in Daly and Trofimov (References, pp 130-136), who claim that the account is considered by leading scholars to be accurate. This makes it clear that there were no survivors, and describes how the three daughters wore bodices studded with diamonds and other precious stones, which acted as protection against the bullets. Two of the corpses were burned; the rest had sulphuric acid poured over them to foil identification. Anastasia was seventeen.

 

Very soon though rumours spread that Anastasia had escaped, and imposters came forward claiming to be her; the most famous being Anna Anderson.  England would have been a favoured place to flee to, as so many émigrés over the years have; especially as Anastasia spoke fluent English.  The rumours persisted until final proof of her death came after the remains of Anastasia were unearthed in 1991. Later the charred remains of a young boy and a young woman were found near Ekaterinburg in August 2007. Forensic tests, and later DNA identification, confirmed that no member of the family escaped.

 

The Romanov family have come to symbolise the injustices of terror for many, and it is not hard to see why a story of a young Princess escaping,  just when silent film was reaching its apogee, was chosen to base a fictional film on. A much more glossy film of the Princess, called Anastasia, was made in 1997.  Certainly a great deal has been written about the Romanov family and their fate. Even more has been written about the Russian Revolution. Treading a path through all of the many different accounts, often having widely differing sympathies, is not easy. 

 

In 1918 a civil war was raging in Russia, which was to continue for another three years. Those who opposed the Revolution formed the White Army, aided by thirteen outside countries. At the time of the execution the Czechoslovakian army, on the side of the White Army, were approaching. Fearful that Tsar Nicholas II would be freed, and become a symbol for resistance, the Bolsheviks issued the order to have his family killed. Mass terror was openly being carried out on both sides, with each side justifying this on the grounds that there was no alternative if their vision for the future for Russia was to prevail. Huge numbers of innocent people were killed as a result. Some of it, such as the White anti-Semitic pogroms, was a carry over of what had gone before. With Stalin’s assumption of power after the death of Lenin in 1924, this was to continue, resulting in millions of deaths.

 

All of this may seem a long way from a story made up by young people in Goole.  But today asylum seekers still come to Goole as they do to many other places, often escaping violence not unlike that of Russia in civil war. However, unless they are especially famous, their stories seldom receive much attention, let alone sympathy.  In fact, ironically, most of those fleeing Russia – and other Easter European countries – up until that time, would have been Jews escaping the persecution that took place under her father and grandfather. But Goole has strong historical associations with people from other countries. It has owed much to trade with Denmark, and had important ties with other countries, such as Poland: seamen from off the Russian ships bringing timber would play football with local dockers.  So it is to be hoped that Goole remains a place where people from all over can come and seek refuge from persecution.

 

 

Jonathan Daly and Leonid Trofimov (editors), Russia in War and Revolution, 1914-1922: A Documentary History, Hackett, Indianapolis, 2009.

Rex Wade, The Bolshevik Revolution and Russian Civil War, Greenwood Press, London, 2001.

Robert Winder, Bloody Foreigners: the story of immigration to Britain, Little, Brown, 2004.

 

 

Helen Rappaport, Ekateriburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, Windmill Books, 2009