ALEXEI & RASPUTIN - Abdication Manifesto of Nicholas II

ALEXEI & RASPUTIN: "A Novel about a boy who changed the world" is available through www.BestofBroadwayProductions.com

ABDICATION MANIFESTO OF TSAR NICHOLAS II
By the grace of God, we, Nicholas II, Emperor of all the Russias, Tsar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc., etc., to all our faithful subjects make known:
In these days of terrible struggle against the foreign enemy who has been trying for three years to impose his will upon Our Fatherland, God has willed that Russia should be faced with a new and formidable trial. Troubles at home threaten to have a fatal effect on the ultimate course of this hard-fought war. The destinies of Russia, the honour of Our heroic army, the welfare of the nation and the whole future of our dear country require that the war shall be continued, cost what it may, to a victorious end.
Our cruel enemy is making his final effort and the day is at hand when our brave army, with the help of our glorious allies, will overthrow him once and for all.
At this moment, a moment so decisive for existence of Russia. Our conscience bids Us to facilitate the closest union of Our subjects and the organization of all their forces for the speedy attainment of victory. For that reason We think it right-and the Imperial Duma shares Our view - to abdicate the crown of the Russian State and resign the supreme power.
As We do not desire to be separated from Our beloved son, We bequeath Our inheritance to Our brother, the Grand Duke Michael Alexandrovich, and give him Our blessing on his access ionto the throne. We ask him to govern in the closest concert with the representatives of the nation who sit in the legislative assemblies and to pledge them his inviolable oath in the name of the beloved country.
We appeal to all the loyal sons of Russia and ask them to do their patriotic and sacred duty by obeying their Tsar at this moment of painful national crisis and to help him and the representatives of the nation to guide the Russian State into the path of prosperity and glory.
NICHOLAS
Witnessed Minister of the Imperial Court, Adjutant
General Count Federicks
Pskov, 2 March 1917, 3.05 p.m."

ALEXEI & RASPUTIN - Russian Proverbs as Chapter Titles

The majority of Chapter Titles in ALEXEI & RASPUTIN: A Novel about a boy who changed history, are ancient Russian proverbs. The book is available thru www.BestofBroadwayProductions.com
Table of Contents

I The Grandfather of All Blizzards
II "Prosperity is not Contagious, only Poverty
III "It is Very High Up to God. It is Very Far to
the Tsar"
IV "He Who Takes the Child by the Hand, Takes
the Mother by the Heart"
V Tsarskoe Selo (The Tsar's Village)
VI "It's not the Rooms that make a House
Beautiful, it's the Pirozhki"
VII "Let The Devil into the Church and He will
Mount the Altar"
VIII Mathilde and Swan Lake
IX The Regimen at Tsarskoe Selo
X The Beast
XI "In Times of War, the Devil Makes more
room in Hell"
XII "Fate's Joke on Kings"
XIII "He That is Too Proud to Ask is too
Good to Receive
XIV "For Faith, God and Country"
XV Stavka - Military hdq
XVI The Battlefield of Heroes
XVII Riddle of the Tsars
XVIII Spala...A Mother's Agony
XIX Death of the Holy Devil
XX A Revolution of Rage and Revenge
XXI The Abdication
XXII Silent Night of Terror
XXIII Your Papa Does Not Want to be
Tsar Anymore
XXIV Epilogue - March 1917 - July 1918
XXV Notes from Sergei Protopopov

Adenda I
Adenda II
Adenda III
Glossary
Bibliography

Alexei & Rasputin - Cast of Characters

ALEXEI & RASPUTIN: A novel about a boy who changed the course of history, is available through www.BestofBroadwayProductions.com

NICHOLAS ll, TSAR OF RUSSIA - 1894 - 1917
Before 1894, the Tsarevich Nicholas

ALEXANDRA FEDOROVNA, EMPRESS OF RUSSIA
Born Princess Alix of Hesse-Darmstadt
Granddaughter to Queen Victoria of England

ALEXEI, THE TSAREVICH
Fifth child and only son of Nicholas & Alexandra

OLGA - GRAND DUCHESS
TATIANA - GRAND DUCHESS
MARIE - GRAND DUCHESS
ANASTASIA - GRAND DUCHESS

GRAND DUKE NICHOLAS NICOLAIEVICH
Commander-in-Chief of the Russian Army in WWI

COUNT VLADIMIR FREDERICKS
Minister of the Imperial Court

COUNT PAUL BENCKENDORFF
Grand Marshall of the Imperial Court, Fredericks subordinate

DR. EUGENE BOTKIN
Court Physician

PIERRE GILLIARD
Swiss tutor of the children

ANNA VYRUBOVA
The Empress Alexandra's closest friend and confidante

SERGEI PROTOPOPOV
Peasant boy and friend to Alexei

MATHILDE KSCHESSINSKA
Maid to the Imperial Court, Ballerina

GREGORI RASPUTIN
A Siberian peasant, a starets

ALEXANDER KERENSKY
Prime Minister of the Provisional Government - 1917

VLADIMIR ULYANOV (Lenin)
First leader of the Soviet State

PRINCE FELIX YUSSOPOV
Murderer of Rasputin, second richest man in Russia

GRAND DUKE DMITRY
Murderer of Rasputin, member of the Imperial Family

Tsardom of Russia

The Tsardom of Russia was the official name for the Russian state between Ivan IV's assumption of the title of Tsar (Emperor) in 1547 and Peter the Great's foundation of the Russian Empire in 1721.
Personal Interests:
The Russian Empire was a state that existed from 1721 until the Russian Revolution of 1917.
It was the successor to the Tsardom of Russia, and the predecessor of the Soviet Union.
It was the second largest contiguous empire the world had seen, surpassed only by the Mongol Empire.
At one point in 1866, it stretched from eastern Europe, across Asia, and into North America. At the beginning of the 19th century, Russia was the largest country in the world, extending from the Arctic Ocean to the north to the Black Sea on the south, from the Baltic Sea on the west to the Pacific Ocean on the east. Across this vast realm were scattered the Emperor's 176.4 million subjects, the third largest population of the world at the time, after Qing China and British Raj.

Nicholas II Abdication Manifesto

NICHOLAS II Abdication Manifesto
ABDICATION MANIFESTO OF TSAR NICHOLAS II
By the grace of God, we, Nicholas II, Emperor of all the Russias, Tsar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc., etc., to all our faithful subjects make known:
In these days of terrible struggle against the foreign enemy who The destinies of Russia, the honour of Our heroic army, the welfare of the nation and the whole future of our dear country require that the war shall be continued, cost what it may, to a victorious end.
Our cruel enemy is making his final effort and the day is at hand when our brave army, with the help of our glorious allies, will overthrow him once and for all.
At this moment, a moment so decisive for existence of Russia. Our conscience bids Us to facilitate the closest union of Our subjects and the organization of all their forces for the speedy attainment of victory.

Alexei Romanov remains verified

Posted on Thu, May. 1, 2008

Mystery no more: DNA links bones to czar's children
By Mike Eckel
Associated Press
MOSCOW - For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners gunned down Czar Nicholas II and his family, there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia's throne.
Some said the delicate 13-year-old had survived and escaped; others believed his bones were lost in Russia's vastness, buried in secret amid fear and chaos as the country lurched into civil war.
Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery, identifying bone shards found in a forest as those of Alexei and one of his sisters, Grand Duchess Maria.
The remains of their parents - Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra - and three siblings, including the czar's youngest daughter, Anastasia, were unearthed in 1991 and reburied in the imperial resting place in St. Petersburg. The Russian Orthodox Church made all seven family members saints in 2000.
Despite the earlier discoveries and ceremonies, the absence of Alexei's and Maria's remains had gnawed at descendants of the Romanov dynasty, history buffs and royalists. Even if yesterday's announcement is confirmed and widely accepted, many descendants are unlikely to be fully assuaged; they seek formal "rehabilitation" by the government.
"The tragedy of the czar's family will only end when the family is declared victims of political repression," said German Lukyanov, a lawyer for royal descendants.
Nicholas abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, and he and his family were detained. They were shot by a firing squad July 17, 1918, in the basement of the Yekaterinburg house where they were being held.
Rumors persisted that some of the family had escaped. Claims by women to be Anastasia were particularly prominent, although there were also pretenders to Alexei's and Maria's identities.
"It was 99.9 percent clear they had all been killed; now with these shards, it's 100 percent," said Nadia Kizenko, a Russian scholar at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Researchers unearthed the bone shards last summer in a forest near Yekaterinburg and enlisted Russian and U.S. labs to conduct DNA tests.
Eduard Rossel, governor of the region 900 miles east of Moscow, said tests by a U.S. lab had identified the shards as those of Alexei and Maria.
He did not specify the lab, but a genetic research team working at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has been involved in the process. Evgeny Rogaev, head of the team that tested the remains in Moscow and at the school in Worcester, Mass., was called into the case by the Russian Federation Prosecutor's Office.
He told the Associated Press yesterday that he had delivered the results to Russian authorities but said it was up to the prosecutor's office - not him or his team - to disclose the findings.
The test results were based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material passed down only from mothers to children.
It was unclear whether the Russian Orthodox Church would recognize the results as genuine. The church's press service said no one could comment on yesterday's announcement.

Experts May Have Found Remains of Czar’s Children
August 25 2007
Alexei Vladykin/Associated Pres
A cross in Yekaterinburg marks where two bodies — maybe those of Aleksei and a sister — were found.
An archaeologist in Yekaterinburg, the city where the royal Romanov family was imprisoned and then murdered, said clues left by a leader of the family’s assassins had led investigators to a makeshift grave where they found the possible remains of the czar’s son, Aleksei, and one of his daughters.
Under Lenin’s orders, the czar and his family were shot to death in 1918 in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains in the heart of the country. Their bodies were then most likely doused with acid, mutilated and buried in secret graves so the remains could not be recovered and used as a rallying point for anti-Bolshevik forces.
Nicholas had abdicated the year before, and he and his family were then detained.
In 1991, during the last days of the Soviet Union, the remains of Nicholas, his wife, Aleksandra, and three of their five children were discovered in the city, and seven years later, they were interred in a cathedral in St. Petersburg that holds the crypts of other Russian royalty.
But the remains of Aleksei, the 13-year-old heir to the throne, and one daughter — probably 19-year-old Maria, though there is some dispute about which one — could not be located.
In 2002, scientists thought they might have found those remains, but testing proved them wrong.
On Thursday, though, Sergei Pogorelov, an archaeologist in Yekaterinburg, said in an interview with a Russian television station that the newly unearthed remains might be the missing ones. He said an anthropologist had already determined that the bones were those of a boy 10 to 13 years old and a woman 18 to 23 years old. “Additional analysis and comparisons will be carried out,” he said.
Whatever the results of that testing, which is expected to include DNA matching, they will probably not settle the matter. The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church has never fully acknowledged that the remains of the czar were discovered in 1991, even though scientists conducted extensive DNA tests, using samples from relatives of the royal family, that appeared to prove their authenticity.
Already on Friday, the church leadership in Moscow expressed skepticism about this new find.
In fact, hoaxes, blunders and all manner of misinformation have long abounded when it comes to the Romanovs and their fate. For decades after the assassinations, people would surface and claim that they were family members who had somehow survived the bloodshed, most notably the czar’s daughter Anastasia.