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23 August 2007, 18:09Remains of Russian tsar's children possibly found - archeologists
Yekaterinburg, August 23, Interfax - Archeologists believe that a search party has found what may be the missing remains of the son and one of the daughters of last Russian tsar Nicholas II, an archeologist said on Thursday.
As the rest of the royal family and some members of its retinue, Nicholas' son Alexey and daughter Maria were executed by a firing squad in the Urals in 1918.
"In the course of searches in July and August 1917, the remains of two persons were found with traces of numerous injuries. Ural archeologists surmise that they are the remains of Tsarevich Alexey and Grand Duchess Maria," Sergey Pogorelov, deputy head of the archeological research department of the Sverdlovsk region center for the conservation of historical and cultural monuments, told Interfax.
The remains were found while digging up an area indicated in a document that had remained classified until recently and records a detailed account of the execution by the firing squad commander, Yakov Yurovsky.
According to the document, there were several unsuccessful attempts to hide the remains of the eleven people who had been executed.
Eventually, nine of the bodies were sluiced with sulfuric acid to make them unidentifiable and buried under a small bridge on the side of the Old Koptyaki Road, while the bodies of the two others - Alexey and one of the daughters - were burned down a distance away and buried in a separate pit.
Pogorelov said the July and August excavations had been carried out by the Sverdlovsk center for the conservation of historical and cultural monuments, the Gorny Shchit (Mountain Shield) military and historical club, the History and Archeology Institute, the Plant and Animal Ecology Institute, and the Obreteniye (Acquisition) non-governmental foundation. |
