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Documentary, Russia's Lost Princesses - 2 The Romanov Sisters
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00:0017th of July 1918, these four girls in white dresses were brutally murdered in the bloody climax to the Russian Revolution.
00:09The girls' names may not be remembered, but their alluring mix of beauty and innocence holds an enduring fascination.
00:18They are emblems of a world that vanished forever in the revolution.
00:22In Russia today, the Tsar's four daughters, Olga, Tatyana, Maria and Anastasia, have literally become icons and are worshipped as holy martyrs.
00:40The second program in this two-part series will tell their story in their own words.
00:47Darling, I'm writing to you in semi-darkness, for we have not dared to draw the curtains.
00:52The whitewashed windows are too horrible.
00:55And it will reveal the real girls behind the saintly images.
00:59By 1914, the two eldest Romanov sisters had grown from little girls into young women.
01:19Olga was now 18 and Tatyana 16, and the time had come for them to fulfil the ultimate duty of all royal princesses and be married off to eligible princes.
01:35With their winning combination of blue blood and beauty, it seemed that the world would be their oyster.
01:41I think there's an inherent similarity with Diana being the most photographed princesses of their time, the most marriageable, attractive, desirable young royal princesses in Europe.
01:54These fairy-tale princesses seemed to lead a charmed life.
02:06But behind the happy family photographs, their childhood was far from idyllic.
02:10Although Nicholas was a devoted and indulgent father, he was an ineffectual czar, and as opposition to his rule had mounted, his family had been forced to retreat to the safety and security of their imperial palaces.
02:26The girls' freedom was further constrained by their mother, Alexandra, who maintained an iron grip over their young lives, and raised her daughters in the shadow of their little brother, Alexei, who had the life-threatening condition haemophilia.
02:42At home in the Alexander Palace, the girls were as much prisoners as princesses.
02:52They rarely went out, had few friends, seldom saw their extended family, and knew nothing of the real world beyond the palace gates.
03:02It's extraordinary that you have these four sisters growing up now entering adolescence, and their mother still looking upon them as girlies, as she called them.
03:18There's this constant infantilization of her daughters, as though she couldn't accept that they were growing up, they needed to be out in the wide world.
03:27It's as though she wanted to keep them locked away from that.
03:32It was almost a convent-like existence.
03:35So, these girls, even as they were growing up, with Olga at 18 and Tatiana at 16, they were still much younger than their years, because there was no outside contact, there was no real outside experience.
03:54When it came to the opposite sex, the girls had always been most interested in the officers of the imperial entourage,
04:01and the sailors on their royal yacht, the Stendart, who they had known since childhood.
04:08Though these could never be more than teenage crushes, to marry so far beneath themselves would have been quite unthinkable.
04:15But when the search for suitable husbands began in earnest, it soon became clear that Olga and Tatiana were ill-prepared to mix with the Grand Dukes, or princes, who were their social equals.
04:29You get this extraordinary sight of Lodzai escorting his two oldest daughters to these swish balls during the centenary year and in 1914, and they don't know anybody.
04:42And they gravitate towards the officers from the Stendart, or the imperial entourage, and this caused an awful lot of disapproval in St. Petersburg society.
04:54They seemed such ingenues, so lacking in social accomplishments, so innocent, so childish, really.
05:02In the summer of 1914, whilst most of Europe was preoccupied with thoughts of the impending war, the four sisters were more concerned with matters of the heart.
05:16The Tsar and Tsarina thought they might have found a royal match for Olga in Prince Carol, the heir to the Romanian throne, but their eldest daughter would take some convincing.
05:27Olga was really rather horrified that Carol of Romania had been suggested as a prospective bridegroom, because he had quite a reputation as a ladies' man.
05:39He wasn't really ideal material, so far as Olga was concerned, and she was actually quite definite that she wasn't having anything to do with it.
05:48In June 1914, the Romanov family paid a visit to their Romanian counterparts.
05:53This was intended to be an opportunity for the dubious Carol to win over the reluctant Olga.
06:01As the families posed for an official photograph, Olga, sat at the far right-hand side of frame, kept her distance from Carol at the back, and paid far more attention to the baby on her knee than to him.
06:14And just in case he hadn't got the message, she and her sisters had concocted a cunning plan to ward off any Romanian advances.
06:24They had all spent time lying in the sun before going across to Romania, and were quite sunburnt, and it was something that the Romanians immediately noticed with horror.
06:36Royal princesses do not have sunburn and look like sunburnt gypsies, and they were very disapproving of the fact.
06:44And in a way, the Romanov girls were triumphant, because this was a deliberate conspiracy on their part, that none of them should be attracted to Prince Carol, and none of them should have to marry him and leave home.
06:57The sisters might not have felt there was much urgency to the hunt for a husband, but within a few weeks of their return home, any thought of marriage, or of leaving Russia, had become a distant dream.
07:17On the 19th of July, the German Kaiser declared war on Russia.
07:22The next day, Nicholas and Alexandra appeared on the balcony of the Winter Palace in St. Petersburg, to be met by a vast crowd singing, God Save the Tsar.
07:38But such patriotic fervour was sorely tested by the scale of the bloodshed.
07:52In the first five days of fighting alone, 70,000 Russian soldiers were killed or wounded.
08:01To deal with the unprecedented scale of casualties, thousands of European women from all walks of life volunteered as Red Cross nurses, and the Tsarina and her two eldest daughters eagerly joined their ranks.
08:14This wasn't a matter of just donning an apron and mopping a fevered brow and holding hands by the bedside.
08:22This was real hands-on nursing and everything that involved, seeing people with horrible mutilations and wounds.
08:31Within a couple of weeks, the girls were observing amputations, and it was throwing them in absolutely at the deep end.
08:39These were very protected girls who had never seen anything of human suffering, really.
08:45The sisters Romanova, as they were known, worked on a special ward of the hospital at Sarko-Selo, caring for wounded officers.
08:55Although it was only a short drive from the Alexander Palace, for the girls, the hospital was another world.
09:01It did give them a taste of what normal people were like, really.
09:06In fact, one day, they sent the car for them without the lady-in-waiting present.
09:11And the girls got in the car, and they decided, instead of going straight back to the palace, they would go shopping.
09:16They went into a shop and then realised they didn't actually know how to buy anything.
09:20And the next day, they came back and asked one of the nursing sisters, how do we go shopping?
09:24And she had to explain to them.
09:26The irony of the war years is that it finally brought the girls the kind of social contact that they had been craving,
09:35albeit often with wounded officers and people who were suffering and recovering from injury.
09:41But they were so curious to take advantage of these opportunities of talking to men from the outside,
09:49you know, ordinary officers and soldiers, ask them about the world outside.
09:54The outside life, as they called it, was something that fascinated all five children.
10:00Even Alexei constantly interrogated people when he visited at the hospital about the outside life.
10:06There was this world that they just didn't know about.
10:11If the war expanded the Romanovs' extremely narrow horizons,
10:17then it also tested the bonds of an incredibly close-knit family.
10:21Nicholas was often away at the front, and Alexandra found the agony of separation hard to bear.
10:28The couple wrote to each other incessantly, sometimes several times a day,
10:33and their letters revealed that twenty years of marriage had not dimmed their devotion to,
10:39and desire for, each other.
10:43I praise you passionately to my heart and lower.
10:47Forgive me.
10:49Lady thanks you for the caress, which she returns with great love.
10:54The type of language, the tone of their letters, of course, we can kind of be a little bit cynical about,
11:03but what we have to remember is that these were private letters that were never meant to be read by anybody but Nicholas and Alexandra.
11:13So the language, it's lovey-dovey, and it's you're my sunshine, my life, my, you know,
11:18but it's, what it actually indicates, very strongly indeed,
11:24is that throughout the marriage, right from the time they met to the day that they died,
11:31they didn't stop loving one another.
11:33Alexandra's letters were driven not just by a physical longing,
11:39but by a deep-rooted fear that at this critical moment in their country's history,
11:44the man to whom she was so passionately devoted was simply not up to the job of being czar.
11:52It's been said about Nicholas that he was essentially a pillow,
11:55that he sort of bore the impression of the last person that sat upon him.
11:59It is a source of constant concern and frustration for Alexandra.
12:03She loves Nicholas dearly, but she sees him as a weak man.
12:06And if you read their correspondence, this comes through very clear.
12:10She's constantly telling him, be strong, be strong, don't be talked out of something,
12:15you need to stand up, the Russians need a strong man.
12:18And she's forever repeating these lines over and over in their correspondence.
12:23Be more autocratic than Peter the Great, bang your fist,
12:27they just need you to bang your fist, the Russians like people who bang their fists,
12:30and give them a smack.
12:32I mean, she does talk, again, in a rather infantilising way,
12:35give them a smack and they'll behave themselves.
12:37He must have dreaded these letters arriving,
12:40even though he claims to be really pleased to hear from her,
12:42because she got bossier and bossier.
12:44And if words alone weren't enough, Alexandra had a secret weapon in her arsenal,
12:50the family's beloved spiritual advisor, Grigori Rasputin.
12:55Rasputin's remarkable abilities to ease their son, Alexei's suffering,
13:00ensured that he was the one outsider in whom the imperial couple had complete faith.
13:06She's always sending things, trinkets and little talismans and things from Rasputin to Nicholas.
13:13There's a time where she says, you know, remember you have his comb,
13:17you have the comb from our friend.
13:18Before you're meeting with the ministers, with the top brass, make sure you use it.
13:23This will give you the strength you need to hold firm and stand your ground.
13:26And she's always doing this.
13:27She's sending him bits of fruit from Rasputin to eat.
13:30It's utterly bizarre.
13:32A year into the war, Rasputin wasn't just dispensing lucky charms,
13:39but highly controversial political advice.
13:42By the summer of 1915, the Russian army was in retreat.
13:46Almost a million and a half Russians had been killed or wounded in the fighting,
13:51and troop morale was dwindling fast.
13:54Rasputin convinced Alexandra that the Tsar must sack his uncle,
13:58the highly experienced Grand Duke Nicholas Nikolaevich,
14:02as commander-in-chief, and take charge of the army himself.
14:07And in fact, when the Tsar told his mother, the dowager,
14:10that he was thinking of getting rid of Nikolasha,
14:13she said, everyone will think this is Rasputin's bidding.
14:17And she writes in her diary, and he blushed.
14:20With the Tsar commanding the army,
14:26he left the Tsarina at the Alexander Palace,
14:29with instructions to oversee the running of the government.
14:33She was only too happy to oblige.
14:37Many now believe that this was the true seat of imperial power,
14:41and they had their suspicions about how much influence
14:44the Tsarina's favorite was wielding.
14:47Once Nikolaevich leaves and heads to the front permanently,
14:53everyone is then focused on what Alexandra is doing in the palace.
14:58And the fact that Rasputin remains in Petrograd
15:01leads to all sorts of rumor and gossip and salacious talk
15:06that the two of them are, in a sense, pulling all the strings.
15:10And these are the true powers behind the throne,
15:13and they are the ones that will bring ruin to the country.
15:17As the atmosphere at home grew increasingly claustrophobic,
15:23the Romanov sisters found a welcome escape in their war work.
15:28Hundreds of their private photographs reveal how close
15:31Olga and Tatiana became to their favorite patients.
15:34The hospital increasingly became like a second home for all of them.
15:41And as the years went on and more and more wounded were arriving,
15:45they spent longer and longer days, often till nearly midnight,
15:48changing the dressings, making beds,
15:50helping boil the silk for sewing stitches and preparing swabs.
15:54They had free time in the afternoons after they went home for lunch
15:58to go back to the hospital and sit with their favorites and look at photographs,
16:02take endless photographs of each other.
16:05And such became this narrow but, in a way, strangely happy life they had,
16:12that even when they went home at the end of the day,
16:15they often still telephoned back to have one last chat with their favorites.
16:20Beneath their bandages, many of the wounded were dashing young men,
16:28and for teenage girls so starved of male company, they proved irresistible.
16:34It's rather amusing when you look at all the many photographs
16:36taken of Olga and Tatiana at their hospital during the war years
16:40with their favorite officers, their favorite wounded,
16:43that most of these young men were rather dark, swarthy, caucasian types
16:47with big, twirly moustaches, men from Armenia or Georgia
16:52with a certain kind of exoticness.
16:55Some of them, even, I think, were Muslims.
16:57They seemed to fall for those kind of dark, enigmatic, swashbuckling looks
17:02much more than your rather austere Northern European Russian types.
17:08In May 1915, a wounded Georgian officer, Dmitry Shakhbogov,
17:13was admitted to the hospital.
17:15He was a sweet and bashful character,
17:19and Olga and he were soon smitten with each other.
17:22But love had scarcely had the chance to blossom when disaster struck,
17:26and Mitya recovered and was sent back to the front.
17:31It's kind of an irony, really, that he had to get seriously wounded again
17:36for Olga to see him later in the year.
17:38But when Mitya Shakhbogov was brought back, quite badly wounded a second time,
17:45her world lit up again, and she was happy, and she was smiling,
17:50and she found every possible excuse to be at the hospital.
17:53And this was the sum of her life, her world.
17:57Olga filled her diary with references to her beloved Mitya.
18:02But her position meant that there was no hope this passionate affair could ever be consummated.
18:27I think if Olga had had her wish to marry and live quietly in the country,
18:35she would have wanted to marry a man just like Mitya,
18:38an ordinary man rather than a prince, an ordinary Russian soldier.
18:44It's rather sad that the one thing Olga really wanted to do was hardly likely to happen.
18:49I mean, she was an imperial grand duchess.
18:51She was going to have to make a grand marriage.
18:55Olga's thwarted romances only exacerbated the bouts of depression she suffered during the war,
19:01which was so severe that she was treated with the period cure-all of arsenic injections.
19:07I think part of the cause might have been her relationship with Mitya,
19:11the fact that she was besotted by this chap,
19:14and that she knew that really and truly it wasn't going to go anywhere.
19:17Dimitri finally left the hospital at the beginning of 1916,
19:23and Olga never saw him again.
19:26But to the very end of her life, she carried a flame for him.
19:32She's clutching at the stores for every shred of news about Mitya, how he is,
19:37and towards the end of the year, is thrilled to meet his mother and says,
19:41Oh, it's wonderful. I have a little piece of him. I've met his mother.
19:45And as late as the beginning of 1917, almost one of her last diary entries,
19:50she's recording his birthday.
19:52And when he first was admitted to the hospital,
19:55he did find a very special place in her heart, I think.
20:00Behind the scenes, private passions might get the better of the sisters, Romanova.
20:05But in public, the Tsarina and her daughter's war work was meant to serve an important propaganda purpose,
20:12although it didn't always create quite the right impression.
20:15There was a need for the imperial family to put out a good message, good online message, you know.
20:24And there was a photo opportunity done for the empress and her daughters.
20:30The basement of the Windsor Palace had been turned part of it into a military hospital,
20:34and the empress had worked there as a volunteer,
20:38and she and her daughters were photographed in nurses' outfits.
20:42All sounds fine, except that they hadn't taken into account that by this time,
20:47a British consignment of nurses' outfits, delivered to St. Petersburg, Petrograd, as it was then,
20:53had fallen into the hands of the city's prostitutes.
20:56And the whole image of the nurse had been transformed.
21:00So this attempt to put out a good PR message backfired very badly.
21:06But it was the family's close association with a man of Rasputin's notorious proclivities
21:12that caused by far the greatest damage to their reputation.
21:17Amid the isolation of the Alexander Palace, the Tsarina seemed oblivious to rumours
21:22which made a mockery of her much-vaunted morality.
21:26The empress really becomes the key political figure in the capital, and she loves this role.
21:32She likes the fact that she boasts in her diary
21:35that she's the first woman in Russia to receive ministers since Catherine the Great.
21:39And maybe she sees herself playing that sort of role.
21:43But in reality, she's much more playing out the part of Marie Antoinette
21:49on the eve of the French Revolution.
21:51Completely unpopular.
21:53With all sorts of rumours circulating around society of her sexual shenanigans with Rasputin.
22:00All of this was very damaging because these ideas of sexual corruption in the court
22:07became a sort of metaphor for the political corruption of the monarchy as a whole.
22:12But Alexandra had such faith in Rasputin
22:15that she was willing to turn a blind eye to reports of his increasingly embarrassing sexual misdemeanours.
22:21Rasputin had a bad incident in Moscow where he sort of exposed himself in a nightclub
22:28and he boasted that he was sleeping with the Tsarina.
22:31When the Tsarina heard about this particular incident and other ones,
22:36she thought that there was a sort of double dressing up as Rasputin,
22:40pretending to be him, just to discredit him because he was so close to the imperial family.
22:46And it wasn't just the empress herself who was implicated in the gossip.
22:53Her innocent children were tarred with the same brush.
22:57It was said that Rasputin had had his wicked way with the Romanov sisters.
23:06Cartoons appear around St. Petersburg, elude cartoons of the Tsarina with Rasputin.
23:13Schoolchildren are singing songs.
23:16It's as though there are suddenly no holds barred
23:19in what you can say about Rasputin and the Tsarina.
23:28Alexandra and Rasputin were not only rumoured to be guilty of a sexual scandal,
23:33but of the most horrifying political betrayal.
23:37The true allegiance of the German Tsarina was called into question,
23:41and even ordinary Russians,
23:44whose loyalty Nicholas and Alexandra had taken for granted,
23:48now seem to have lost all faith in their Tsar and Tsarina.
23:53There's a great conviction that Rasputin and Alexandra,
23:57remember she is a German after all,
23:59are actually spying and working with the Germans
24:03to conclude a separate peace and sell out the Allies.
24:05And this is a very, very widely held belief.
24:09This is not some lunatic fringe.
24:13This is conspiracy beyond anything we in the West can imagine.
24:17A dream to which it extended throughout all of society
24:19was simply unprecedented.
24:21I think historians have tended to sort of belittle all of these rumours
24:28about Rasputin as a bit of tittle-tattle,
24:31and it's interesting but not really part of the revolutionary story.
24:34But I don't agree with them,
24:36because by 1915 when these rumours take off,
24:39there's a revolutionary crisis.
24:41And in a revolutionary crisis,
24:43what matters is not what's true or not.
24:45There's no reliable information.
24:47Newspapers are censored.
24:48People don't know what to believe.
24:49What matters in a revolutionary situation is what people believe.
24:53And these rumours were believed,
24:55not just by ordinary people in the streets,
24:57not just by peasants,
24:58but they were believed by statesmen,
25:00they were believed by foreign ambassadors.
25:01Buchanan, the British ambassador,
25:03Paglia Logue, the French ambassador,
25:05are repeating these rumours
25:06as if they were true to their governments.
25:08So these rumours take on a real political power
25:11and become very damaging to the monarchy.
25:15Shut away in her palace,
25:17Alexander's commitment to the man widely believed
25:21to be at the root of Russia's problems never faltered.
25:26But with the Tsarina insisting that her weak-willed husband
25:29follow every one of Rasputin's political pronouncements,
25:33the government ground to a halt.
25:37Ministers were no sooner appointed than they were sacked.
25:40In little more than a year,
25:43five different prime ministers,
25:45four different ministers of the interior,
25:47and three different war ministers all came and went.
25:52And nobody was more conscious of the looming political crisis
25:55than the extended Romanov family.
25:58If the Tsar would not stand up to his own wife,
26:01they would.
26:02I think you could call the Romanovs at this point
26:06probably one of the great dysfunctional families of all time.
26:09The degree to which no one trusts anyone.
26:12They're talking behind each other's backs.
26:14It's a recipe for disaster.
26:16And it's remarkable the degree to which
26:18they have allowed this to happen.
26:20That they don't realise that they need each other.
26:23On the 16th of December, 1916,
26:29members of the Wider Romanov family
26:31finally made their move.
26:34That evening, Rasputin disappeared in Petrograd.
26:38Anastasia recorded in her diary,
26:41Father Grigori went missing last night.
26:44They're looking for him everywhere.
26:46It's absolutely dreadful.
26:48That night, the sisters were so upset
26:52that the four of them shared a bed.
26:55Two days later, they heard the news they had dreaded.
26:59Rasputin had been murdered.
27:02It was Olga alone who recognised
27:04that his death might be a blessing in disguise.
27:09It's interesting, of the four sisters,
27:11Olga seemed always the most sensitive
27:14to the wider political situation.
27:16And she had sensed, I think, for quite a while
27:19that there was a certain malevolent influence
27:22about Rasputin that was not a good thing.
27:25And perhaps there was a need to kill Rasputin
27:28because he'd overreached himself with their mother
27:30and his influence over her.
27:32But what upset her was the brutal way
27:36in which he was murdered.
27:39Rasputin was poisoned with cyanide-laced cream cakes,
27:43shot and then bludgeoned to death.
27:46In the cellar of the Moika palace,
27:48home to Felix Yusupov,
27:50the heir to Russia's greatest fortune.
27:55For the imperial family,
27:57it wasn't just the gruesome details of the murder
28:00that was so shocking,
28:02but the fact that his killers
28:03were intimately known to them.
28:06Yusupov was married to the Tsar's only niece.
28:10And his co-conspirator, Dmitry Pavlovich,
28:13was even closer to Nicholas and Alexandra
28:15and had once been considered the ideal husband for Olga.
28:22Rasputin's murder is sort of a family murder,
28:24almost, if you will.
28:26I mean, Grand Duke Dmitry Pavlovich,
28:28one of the main conspirators,
28:31was a cousin of Nicholas II
28:32and was practically raised almost as a surrogate's son by Nicholas.
28:36So this was sort of treachery
28:38at a most intimate, personal level
28:41and clearly struck at the very heart of Nicholas and Alexandra
28:45when they learned the degree to which the people
28:48that they had allowed in,
28:50and very few people were allowed in to them
28:52and to be close to them.
28:54These were the ones who then sort of thrust the dagger
28:56and struck at a person
28:58in whom they had placed all their faith and hope.
29:02Alexandra is completely desperate
29:06over Rasputin's murder.
29:10She's also very bitter.
29:12There was already a great divide
29:13between her and the rest of the family,
29:15but it must have made it enormously impossible
29:18to cross the divide
29:19when it was realized
29:20that actually members of their own family
29:22had been involved in the assassination.
29:25It's like assassinating her.
29:29The Romanov clan hoped that the murder
29:32would be just the first step in a palace coup.
29:36It wasn't Rasputin alone they wanted to see the back of,
29:39but the Tsarina herself.
29:44Rasputin's murder was part of a larger plan.
29:46It wasn't simply one murder that they were planning,
29:49but it was sort of a larger way
29:51of trying to neutralize not just, obviously, Rasputin,
29:54but Alexandra as well,
29:55that there was talk that she would be sent to a convent
29:57and forced to take orders
29:59as a way of getting her out of the government,
30:02of, again, fighting these dark forces
30:04and thus allowing Nicholas, they hoped,
30:07to stand up and take complete rule of the country.
30:10Nicholas's own mother allied herself
30:13with her son's opponents
30:14and agreed that her wayward daughter-in-law
30:17should be banished.
30:18If only the Lord would open poor Nicky's eyes
30:22and that he would stop following her dreadful advice.
30:25What despair!
30:26All of this will end in disaster.
30:29I think the conspirators believe
30:30that the monarchy will come to its senses.
30:33Nicholas will correct his policies
30:35and allow for a sort of compromise
30:37with the opposition forces
30:39to see the country through to the end of the war.
30:42But, you know, in assassinating Rasputin,
30:46they bring about quite the opposite
30:48because Nicholas and Alexandra withdraw even further into seclusion
30:52and will have no truck with any talk of reform.
30:57So, look, by January 1917,
30:58we have a really hopeless situation
31:00in which there's no possibility for any compromise at this late stage.
31:06And, really, the monarchy's doomed.
31:10By February 1917, Nicholas and Alexandra's isolation was absolute.
31:17They were estranged from their wider family
31:20and totally cut off from Russia's looming political crisis.
31:24Nicholas is oblivious to the situation.
31:28He's out at headquarters.
31:31And his diary, you know,
31:33it's still filled with the usual stuff
31:35about who was at dinner, games of dominoes still.
31:39He's more concerned that a couple of his daughters have measles
31:42than with the reports that are now coming in in February
31:45from General Khabarov about disturbances in the capital.
31:49And he's not prepared to make any concessions at this late stage.
31:54On Sunday, the 26th of February,
31:56the Tsar ordered the use of military force
31:59to put down protests in Petrograd,
32:01but the capital soldiers chose instead to side with the people.
32:06The following day, the Petrograd garrison mutinied
32:09and a disturbance became a revolution.
32:20Out at the Alexander Palace,
32:23all the children, except Maria, had the measles.
32:26From their sickbeds, they heard gunfire
32:30and the playing of the Marseillais coming from the town barracks.
32:34But the Tsarina insisted they should not be told anything was wrong
32:38until it was impossible to keep the truth from them.
32:43Alexandra refused to take the threat of evolution seriously.
32:47Even when reports were coming in thick and fast of marches and protests and bread riots,
32:53she thought it was all a storm in an teacup and it would soon blow over,
32:57and she refused to accept that the enemy was at the gates.
33:02But as the unrest in Petrograd intensified,
33:06events overtook the Romanov family.
33:09The leaders of the Duma and Nicholas's own military chiefs
33:13insisted that only his abdication could resolve the crisis,
33:17and the Tsar did not take much convincing.
33:21On the 2nd of March,
33:23more than three centuries of Romanov rule came to an end
33:27when Nicholas renounced the throne for himself and Alexei.
33:32Initially, only Maria was told the news,
33:35as the other children were still so ill.
33:37She seemed to be taking it well,
33:39until one of the court ladies discovered her crouched in a corner, weeping.
33:44She was terrified that the revolutionaries would come and take her mother away.
33:50Almost a week later,
33:51Alexandra finally broke the news to the rest of the children.
33:55It was Alexei who was the most perplexed by it all.
34:00He was totally bewildered.
34:01He couldn't understand.
34:03He said,
34:03Well, does that mean I won't be able to go and see my soldiers any more?
34:07Won't we be able to go on the Stondata yacht and sail round as a family?
34:12No, none of that was going to happen any more.
34:15And then he asked the perfectly logical question.
34:18He said,
34:19Well, who's going to be Tsar?
34:22Well, there isn't going to be a Tsar, he was told.
34:24But if there isn't a Tsar, he asked,
34:28who's going to govern Russia?
34:33On the 9th of March, the former Tsar, or Colonel Romanov, as he was now known,
34:41came home to a palace that was now a prison.
34:45The provisional government had placed the Romanovs under house arrest.
34:49For a family who had always sought to distance themselves from the outside world,
34:55their isolation was now strictly enforced.
34:58They were not allowed to leave the palace,
35:01to receive visitors,
35:02to use the telephone or telegraph,
35:05and their letters were even checked for invisible ink.
35:08For the children, life in this world turned upside down was a rude awakening.
35:18Derevinko, who was one of Alexis' sailor carers,
35:22lifted him, protected him from hurting himself.
35:24And there was a sort of role reversal,
35:27which was horrible because he started shouting at Alexis,
35:30giving him orders.
35:31He was quite overweight, Derevinko,
35:33and Alexis used to shout,
35:34look at Fatty, run.
35:36And then all of a sudden,
35:38Fatty's turning round and saying,
35:40pick up your own things.
35:44The family could only go outside under armed guard
35:48and were not allowed to stray beyond a small area of the Alexander Park.
35:53This bridge marked a frontier which they could not cross.
35:57To compound their humiliation,
36:00the captives became a visitor attraction.
36:03Hundreds of curious onlookers flocked to the park gates,
36:07eager for a glimpse of their fallen royals.
36:10But for a dethroned autocrat,
36:13Nicholas seemed remarkably accepting of his new life.
36:16In a way, abdication was an enormous relief for Nicholas.
36:20He accepted with an extraordinary sort of equanimity.
36:24It was almost a sense of indifference.
36:26One of the commandants at the palace said
36:29that he was like the lowest form of plant life,
36:32you know, unreacting.
36:34He was like a human oyster,
36:36so clamped up, so introverted,
36:40that nothing, he showed nothing on the surface
36:43about how he felt about this momentous event in his life.
36:49Nicholas had always prized his private life above all else.
36:53Now his great hope was that his family should remain together
36:57and be allowed to go into exile within Russia or abroad.
37:01I think he felt that it would all come right in the end.
37:09I think you had to have a lot of faith to think that,
37:12but he did think that.
37:14And don't forget, his family,
37:15his connections, his cousins, were so widespread.
37:18He knew them all very well because they had spent time with him.
37:23He'd travelled a lot.
37:25And there were many occasions when there were family occasions
37:28when he saw a lot of them.
37:30So I think they always felt that whatever happened,
37:33somebody would bail them out in the air
37:35and somebody would rescue them.
37:36I don't think they knew quite to what extent they were in danger.
37:42Immediately after the revolution,
37:44King George V had offered his cousin Nicky asylum in Britain.
37:49He had this aspiration that perhaps he could come to England
37:52and be a gentleman farmer and as his cousin Willie,
37:56the Kaiser of St. Ibsen, being country gen,
37:58that would have suited Nicholas to live in obscurity
38:02and just be a modest family man.
38:06But such modest ambitions were ultimately...
38:09If they had acted quickly,
38:11if both Alexander out north to an ice-free port like Murmansk
38:15and under a white flag to Britain,
38:19but the tragedy was the children were far too sick to be moved.
38:22And that's really the ultimate what-if.
38:26If the children hadn't been ill,
38:28might they have been able to get them out to safety?
38:32By the time the children recovered,
38:34cousin George had had second thoughts
38:37and withdrawn his offer of asylum.
38:40The family's future was now more uncertain than ever.
38:44If Nicholas and the children were coping
38:46with the dramatic reversal in their fortunes,
38:49then Alexandra was not.
38:51Under house arrest, she grew increasingly melancholic.
38:55After their attack of the measles,
38:58her daughter's hair had begun to fall out
39:00and they had all had to shave their heads,
39:03Alexei joining in to show solidarity.
39:06But when their mother was confronted
39:08with a photograph of her daughters
39:10proudly displaying their bald heads,
39:13she was horrified.
39:14She thought they looked like those condemned to death.
39:17After almost five months under house arrest,
39:23the family left the Alexander Palace
39:25for the last time on the 1st of August.
39:28Nicholas wrote in his diary,
39:30The sunrise that saw us off was beautiful.
39:33We left Saskia Silo at 6.10 in the morning.
39:36Thank God we are all safe and together.
39:40At the Aleksandrovsky station,
39:42they boarded a special train.
39:43Its final destination was unknown.
39:47All the family had been told
39:49was to prepare for a long trip east
39:51and to pack plenty of warm clothes.
39:54For the children,
39:56this would be their first sight of a homeland
39:58they hardly knew.
40:00The empire that their father was Tsar of
40:05was so vast that anything beyond the limitations
40:08of White Russia, i.e. Peaceburg down to Moscow
40:12and a bit beyond,
40:13were unknown to the children.
40:15It was such a vast place.
40:17So this great hinterland of endless forests
40:20and great flat horizons that they entered
40:24on that long four-day train ride through to Siberia
40:27was a whole different world
40:29that the children had never seen.
40:31Anastasia described the journey
40:35for her tutor, Sydney Gibbs,
40:37in her somewhat broken English.
40:40The first day was hot and very dusty.
40:43At the stations,
40:44we had to shut our window curtains
40:45that nobody should see us.
40:48On the way, many funny things happened.
40:51And if I shall have time,
40:52I shall write to you our travel further on.
40:56Goodbye.
40:58Don't forget me.
40:59She was right to worry.
41:09Their ultimate destination
41:10had been chosen precisely
41:12to keep the family
41:13so far out of sight and mind
41:16that there was little chance
41:17that royalists would rescue them
41:19or violent revolutionaries
41:21would kill them.
41:24Tobolsk was a provincial backwater
41:261,700 miles east of St. Petersburg.
41:31It had been bypassed
41:32by the Trans-Siberian Railway
41:34and was accessible only by boat.
41:36During the seven-month-long Siberian winter,
41:42the river froze
41:43and the town was completely cut off
41:45from the outside world.
41:49The family's new home
41:51was meant to be one of the best houses in town,
41:54but when an advance party
41:56went to inspect the accommodation,
41:58they found it dirty, smelly,
42:00and stripped of almost all furniture.
42:04When the family are living
42:06in the former governor's mansion in Tobolsk,
42:10it's clearly,
42:11if not a terrible prison condition,
42:15it's not pleasant.
42:17And Nicholas complains about the plumbing
42:18and that the toilets keep overflowing
42:20and it does all sound fairly unpleasant
42:22when you're used to a palace.
42:24Conditions in the house were cramped
42:28and the four sisters shared a bedroom.
42:31They filled it with reminders
42:32of their previous life,
42:34religious icons,
42:36family snaps,
42:37and pictures of their favourite wounded officers.
42:42As they adjusted to their new life,
42:45what little they got to see
42:46of Siberia was a revelation
42:47and their captors were struck
42:50by the girls' naivety.
42:52The commissary in charge of them
42:54thought they were terribly, badly educated.
42:58Because he was rather shocked
42:59when he noticed their bewilderment
43:01at seeing local Yakuts
43:03and Siberian indigenous peoples
43:05going around in reindeer skins
43:07and the girls would be standing there at the window
43:09looking in bafflement
43:11at these strange people on the streets below
43:14as though they were from another planet
43:15and he wondered just exactly
43:18how broad their education had been.
43:21The family's outside space
43:24was far more limited
43:25than at the Alexander Palace.
43:27They had just a small kitchen garden
43:29and a yard.
43:31Desperate for something to do,
43:33Nicholas would pace the yard
43:3540 or 50 times an hour
43:36and perform daily chin-ups
43:38on a horizontal bar.
43:41He and his children
43:42grabbed any opportunity for fresh air
43:44and a view of the outside world.
43:48When you see photographs of them
43:50and they always look a bit odd
43:51to our eyes
43:52sitting on top of a
43:53sort of what looks like a greenhouse
43:56you think, well, what are they doing?
43:57Well, the answer was
43:58they'd suddenly get some sun
44:00because they'd been sitting
44:01stewed up in this
44:03indoors all the time
44:05so it was nice to get out
44:06and get a little fresh air
44:07and that's the only place they could do it
44:09because they wouldn't let them go anywhere else.
44:10As the Siberian winter set in
44:16there was little sun left to catch
44:18and by mid-December
44:20the temperature had dropped
44:21below minus 20.
44:24The family tried to keep busy
44:26chopping wood
44:27and pulling Alexei around
44:28on his sledge.
44:30Inside the house
44:31it was so cold
44:32that Anastasia complained
44:34our hands do not write properly.
44:38But that didn't stop her
44:39and her sisters sending endless letters
44:41although they had very little to say.
44:43As she wrote to her friend Katia
44:45I'm terribly sorry
44:47my letter turned out
44:48to be so stupid and boring
44:50but nothing interesting
44:52ever happens here.
44:55Her older sister, Tatiana
44:56wrote to Valentina
44:58one of the nurses
44:59she had worked with
45:00at the hospital in Sarko-Selo.
45:02We feel we're living
45:04in some kind of far away island
45:06where we receive news of another world.
45:09The time goes quickly
45:10and the days pass completely unnoticed.
45:14When they weren't writing letters
45:16the girls were gazing out of the window.
45:19Ironically it was under house arrest in Tobolsk
45:21that they saw more of ordinary life
45:23than they ever had before
45:25or would again.
45:27Their life became very narrow
45:28very repetitious
45:29very boring
45:30but they did have one thing
45:32that they loved above all others
45:34and that was to sit at the window
45:36and watch the world go by outside.
45:39And this became almost a primary hobby
45:42and the girls would mention it
45:44in their letters to friends and family
45:45how they took such pleasure
45:47in sitting and watching people
45:49in the street below
45:50and waving to them.
45:51At least they had a kind of
45:53point of contact
45:55even if it was through
45:57the glass of the windows.
45:58In their Siberian prison
46:03the Romanovs were starved of news
46:06from the outside world
46:07but what little they did hear
46:10made their position seem bleaker than ever.
46:14At the end of October
46:15the provisional government
46:17was overthrown by a Bolshevik coup
46:19led by Lenin and Trotsky.
46:20The family's fate
46:22now lay in the hands
46:24of their most avowed enemies.
46:27There's no doubt
46:28that Olga
46:29of all the girls
46:30the most sensitive
46:31the most naturally melancholic
46:33felt their captivity
46:35very profoundly
46:36in terms of
46:37the broader picture
46:38of what was going on in Russia.
46:40She was extremely upset
46:41by the fact
46:42that the nation
46:43had turned against
46:44for her
46:45a very loving father.
46:47But it's clear to me
46:50that Olga
46:51of all of them
46:51sensed that
46:52there was something
46:54terrible out there
46:55something terrible
46:56that may perhaps
46:57in the end
46:58destroy them all.
47:01On the 3rd of March 1918
47:03the Bolsheviks
47:04signed a peace treaty
47:05with Germany
47:06but no sooner
47:07had one conflict ended
47:09than another began
47:10and the country
47:11was plunged
47:12into a bloody civil war
47:13between the Bolshevik
47:14Red Army
47:15and the anti-communist
47:17White Army.
47:20The Bolsheviks
47:21were terrified
47:21that the Whites
47:22would attempt
47:23to rescue
47:23their former Tsar
47:24and they decided
47:25that the family
47:26must be moved.
47:28But Alexei
47:29was too ill to travel
47:30so he was left behind
47:32in Tobolsk
47:33with Olga
47:34Tatiana
47:35and Anastasia
47:36whilst Nicholas
47:37Alexandra
47:38and Maria
47:39went on ahead.
47:41The family's
47:42greatest fear
47:43separation
47:44had finally
47:46been realised
47:47and as they said
47:48their goodbyes
47:49the sisters wept.
47:51I think in the end
47:52their religious faith
47:54enabled them
47:55to deal with
47:56this terrible
47:57agony of separation
47:58and it was a separation
48:00that had no
48:02end in sight.
48:03They didn't know
48:04when they were going
48:04to see their parents again.
48:05They didn't even know
48:06if they would see
48:08their parents again
48:09but somehow
48:10they had to hang
48:12on to each other.
48:18Nicholas and Alexandra
48:19expected to be taken
48:20to Moscow
48:21the new Bolshevik capital
48:23but instead
48:24they found themselves
48:25in Russia's third city
48:27Ekaterinburg
48:28more than a thousand
48:30miles east
48:30of the capital.
48:31They were put up
48:34in the Apartheev house
48:35or as the Bolsheviks
48:37had ominously renamed it
48:39the house of special purpose.
48:42The house no longer exists
48:45but where it once stood
48:46the church on the blood
48:48has been built
48:49in honour of the
48:50Romanov sainthood.
48:51It was consecrated
48:53in 2003
48:54and has become
48:55a major pilgrimage site.
48:57Once they're moved
48:59to Ekaterinburg
49:00and incarcerated
49:02in the Apartheev house
49:04it's no longer
49:05house arrest
49:05it must have felt
49:06much more like prison.
49:08The house is surrounded
49:10by a high wooden fence
49:11there are guards
49:12they have to be
49:13accompanied by them
49:14to go to the toilet.
49:16They are
49:17you know
49:18they are insulted
49:19there is
49:20obscenity
49:21graffiti on the walls
49:23it must have been
49:24threatening
49:24they knew
49:25that something
49:25had changed
49:26they knew
49:27that their
49:28political drama
49:29was moving
49:30towards some
49:31sort of resolution
49:33which was not
49:33likely to be
49:34good for them.
49:35In Tobolsk
49:37the sisters
49:37had at least
49:38been able
49:39to watch the world
49:40go by
49:40from their windows
49:41but in Ekaterinburg
49:42even that small
49:44freedom was denied
49:45them.
49:46Maria wrote
49:47to her siblings
49:48Darling
49:49I'm writing
49:50to you
49:50in semi-darkness
49:51for we have
49:52not dared
49:53to draw the curtains
49:54the whitewashed
49:55windows
49:56are too
49:56horrible
49:57on the 20th
49:59of May
50:00her three sisters
50:00and Alexei
50:01began the journey
50:02to Ekaterinburg
50:03by boat
50:04during that trip
50:06their English tutor
50:07Sydney Gibbs
50:08took the last
50:09known photographs
50:10of the children
50:11a lady-in-waiting
50:13who joined them
50:14on that voyage
50:15was struck
50:16by the change
50:16in Olga
50:17during her time
50:18in Tobolsk
50:18she had turned
50:20from
50:20a lovely
50:22bright girl
50:23of 22
50:23into a faded
50:25and sad
50:25middle-aged woman
50:26on the 23rd
50:29of May
50:30the sisters
50:31were reunited
50:32after a lifetime
50:34spent in virtual
50:35captivity
50:35their imprisonment
50:37was now total
50:38there is no
50:42semblance
50:43of real life
50:46at all
50:47you know
50:48the girls
50:49to try
50:50and do
50:52something
50:52about this
50:53unending
50:54boredom
50:55are taught
50:56by the
50:57cook
50:58to make
50:59bread rolls
50:59they have
51:00they take
51:01great delight
51:02in washing
51:03handkerchiefs
51:04the end
51:05is kind of
51:06coming closer
51:08and closer
51:09and I
51:10can't believe
51:11for one moment
51:12that they didn't
51:13have some idea
51:15of what was
51:16going to happen
51:16as they struggled
51:18to adapt
51:19to their new
51:20situation
51:20the sisters
51:21found comfort
51:22from a most
51:23unlikely source
51:24the girls
51:25had always
51:26been drawn
51:27to soldiers
51:27whether the sailors
51:28on the royal
51:29yacht
51:29or the wounded
51:30officers
51:31they had
51:31nursed
51:32and their
51:32jailers
51:33were no
51:33exception
51:34one thing
51:37becomes very
51:38apparent
51:38in the
51:38apartheid
51:39house
51:39that
51:39hot
51:40brief
51:40hot
51:41summer
51:41is that
51:42they're all
51:42going stir
51:43crazy
51:43you have
51:44four
51:45hormonal
51:46young women
51:47plus a
51:48probably
51:48menopausal
51:49mother
51:49and a
51:50sick
51:51brother
51:51all
51:52hemmed in
51:53crammed in
51:54with each
51:55other
51:55it's clear
51:56that those
51:57girls in
51:58their frustration
51:58and their
51:59boredom
51:59saw the
52:00officers
52:01surrounding
52:01them
52:02as the
52:02only
52:02kind of
52:03point
52:03of
52:03contact
52:04the only
52:05form of
52:05entertainment
52:06or
52:07human
52:07associations
52:08of all
52:10the four
52:10girls
52:11Maria
52:11had always
52:12been the
52:12most open
52:13the most
52:14friendly
52:14the most
52:15engaging
52:15she loved
52:16the company
52:17of soldiers
52:17she of all
52:19the sisters
52:20seemed the
52:20most susceptible
52:21within
52:22the apartheid
52:23of house
52:23to making
52:24friendships
52:24that perhaps
52:25would worry
52:26her parents
52:27Maria
52:29was treading
52:29a fine
52:30line
52:30one that
52:32was crossed
52:32on the
52:3326th of
52:33June
52:34her 19th
52:35birthday
52:35when one
52:37of the
52:37guards
52:38Ivan
52:38Skorohodov
52:39brought in
52:40a cake
52:41for her
52:41relations
52:42between
52:43captor
52:44and captive
52:45had become
52:45dangerously
52:46close
52:47it was clear
52:48the fraternization
52:49was going
52:50too far
52:51that the
52:51guards
52:52were being
52:52too kind
52:53getting to
52:54like the
52:54girls
52:55developing
52:55a relationship
52:56with them
52:57and the
52:57girls
52:58with them
52:58and it
52:59was at
52:59this point
53:00that there
53:00was an
53:01extreme
53:01clampdown
53:02on this
53:03fraternization
53:03between
53:04them
53:05and their
53:05captors
53:06the guard
53:07was instantly
53:08dismissed
53:09and jailed
53:10but Maria
53:11suffered a more
53:12subtle punishment
53:13during the
53:14Romanov's
53:15final weeks
53:15the incident
53:16created a
53:17rift
53:17within this
53:18most tightly
53:19knit of
53:19families
53:20it would
53:21appear that
53:22Alexandra
53:22was deeply
53:23disapproving
53:24of Maria's
53:25increasing
53:26friendliness
53:26with the
53:27guards
53:27and that
53:28at some
53:28point
53:28she was
53:29to an
53:29extent
53:30cold
53:30shouldered
53:31certainly
53:31by
53:32Alexandra
53:32there was
53:33a change
53:34a shift
53:35in the
53:36family dynamic
53:37for a while
53:37and Maria
53:38suffered
53:39as a result
53:40no news
53:43came into
53:43the apartheid
53:44house
53:44and no news
53:46came out
53:47with no end
53:48in sight
53:49to their
53:49imprisonment
53:50Russia's
53:51former royals
53:51had nothing
53:52to do
53:53but sit
53:54and wait
53:55but in the
53:57world beyond
53:58their whitewash
53:59windows
53:59the Bolshevik
54:01leadership
54:01were arguing
54:02over the
54:03family's fate
54:04Trotsky
54:05wanted to put
54:06Nicholas on trial
54:07in Moscow
54:08but others
54:09favoured a more
54:10straightforward
54:11solution
54:12the trial
54:13I think
54:14was not really
54:14an option
54:15because to
54:16allow
54:16Nicholas to
54:17stand a
54:18political trial
54:19even though
54:19everybody knew
54:21what its resolution
54:22was going to be
54:22would nonetheless
54:24be to admit
54:25the possibility
54:26of the Tsar's
54:28innocence
54:28and if you admit
54:29the possibility
54:30of his innocence
54:31that's to raise
54:32the question
54:33of the revolution's
54:34legitimacy
54:35so in a sense
54:37to put
54:38the Tsar on trial
54:39was at the same
54:40time to put
54:41the revolution
54:41on trial
54:42and that was not
54:44revolutionary justice
54:45revolutionary justice
54:46was to carry out
54:47the will of the
54:47people
54:48and murder
54:49them
54:50on Monday
54:51the 15th
54:52of July
54:52four local
54:54women came
54:54to wash
54:55the floors
54:55of the
54:55apartheid
54:56house
54:56they were
54:58the last
54:58civilians
54:59to see
54:59the four
55:00sisters
55:00alive
55:01the washer
55:02women couldn't
55:03quite believe
55:04their eyes
55:04when they saw
55:05these girls
55:05in their
55:06plain white
55:07blouses
55:07and their
55:08black frocks
55:08and their hair
55:09of course
55:10hadn't yet
55:10grown back
55:11much beyond
55:12their chins
55:13these were
55:14not royal
55:14princesses
55:15as they
55:15had perceived
55:16them
55:16from the
55:16picture books
55:17and all
55:17the stories
55:18they'd been
55:19told
55:19these weren't
55:20people
55:20sort of
55:21wafting around
55:22in stately
55:23robes
55:23with lots
55:24of beautiful
55:25glittering
55:25jewelry
55:26they were
55:26ordinary
55:27people
55:28just like
55:29us
55:29this chapel
55:34in the
55:35church
55:35on the
55:35blood
55:36stands
55:37on the
55:37site
55:37of the
55:37basement
55:38of the
55:38apartheid
55:39house
55:39where
55:40early
55:40on the
55:41morning
55:41of the
55:4117th
55:42of july
55:43the four
55:43sisters
55:44along
55:45with the
55:45rest
55:45of their
55:46family
55:46were shot
55:47at point
55:48blank
55:48range
55:49and then
55:50bayoneted
55:50to death
55:51after the
55:56murder
55:57their bodies
55:58were dumped
55:58into a
55:59mine
55:59left in
56:00nearby
56:00woods
56:00the order
56:03for the
56:03family's
56:04execution
56:04came from
56:05the very
56:05top
56:06from lenin
56:07himself
56:07but he
56:08did not
56:09want the
56:09bolsheviks
56:10blamed
56:10for the
56:11slaying
56:11of
56:11innocence
56:11so
56:12initially
56:13only
56:13nicholas's
56:14death
56:14was
56:14announced
56:15almost
56:18immediately
56:18rumors
56:19started to
56:20circulate
56:20that one
56:21of the
56:21girls
56:21had
56:21escaped
56:22the
56:23story
56:24of
56:24the
56:24sister
56:24who
56:25survived
56:25became
56:26one
56:26of
56:26the
56:2720th
56:27century's
56:28most
56:28enduring
56:29myths
56:29when
56:31someone
56:32is
56:32important
56:32as
56:33the
56:34imperial
56:34family
56:35disappears
56:35like that
56:36and the
56:37exact
56:38fate of the
56:40children is
56:40unknown
56:41there will
56:41always be
56:42speculation
56:43but I don't
56:44think there
56:45was any
56:46serious doubt
56:47they were
56:48shot by a
56:49ruthless
56:50execution squad
56:51one shooter
56:53for every
56:53person to be
56:54shot
56:55the bodies
56:56were then
56:56eradicated
56:58with
56:58sulfuric
56:59acid
56:59remains
57:00dumped
57:01into
57:01mines
57:02they were
57:02not going
57:02to let
57:03some
57:04teenage
57:05girl
57:05run off
57:06into the
57:06forest
57:07why would
57:08that
57:08happen
57:08when
57:16they died
57:17Olga
57:18was
57:1822
57:19Tatiana
57:2021
57:21Maria
57:2319
57:24and
57:25Anastasia
57:2517
57:26the
57:28sisters
57:29are
57:29remembered
57:30as
57:30martyrs
57:31of a
57:31bloody
57:31revolution
57:32but
57:33they
57:33were
57:33also
57:33the
57:34innocent
57:34victims
57:35of a
57:35mother
57:36and
57:36father
57:36so
57:37divorced
57:37from
57:37reality
57:38that
57:39they
57:39unwittingly
57:40condemned
57:40their
57:41beloved
57:41family
57:42to
57:42a
57:43terrible
57:43fate
58:05and
58:12to
58:13close
58:13and
58:14not
58:14to
58:15sin
58:15uneasy
58:16or
58:16an
58:17hate
58:17know
58:18that
58:19the
58:19election
58:20and
58:21the
58:22of
58:22the
58:22other
58:23group
58:24well
58:24and
58:25I
58:25can
58:27see
58:27that
58:28you
58:28can
58:28see
58:28the
58:29start
58:29of
58:30the
58:31year
Recommended
58:54
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