http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080430/ap_on_re_eu/russia_czar_s_family
DNA confirms IDs of czar's children, ending mystery
By MIKE ECKEL, Associated Press Writer
Wed Apr 30, 7:20 PM ET
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 somehow 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 by identifying
bone shards found in a forest as those of Alexei and his sister, Grand
Duchess Maria.
The remains of their parents =97 Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra =97 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 of them
saints in 2000.
Despite the earlier discoveries and ceremonies, the absence of
Alexei's and Maria's remains gnawed at descendants of the Romanov
dynasty, history buffs and royalists. Even if Wednesday's announcement
is confirmed and widely accepted, many descendants of the royal family
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 on
July 17, 1918, in the basement of the Yekaterinburg house where they
were being held.
Rumors persisted that some of the family had survived and 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. "Those who
regret this news will be those who liked the royal pretender myth."
Alexei was one of the more compelling of the victims, drawing sympathy
because of his hemophilia. His mother's terror of the disease and fear
that he would not live to gain the throne were key to her falling
under the thrall of the hypnotic and ***ually ravenous self-declared
holy man Rasputin, who exerted vast influence on the royal family.
Researchers unearthed the bone shards last summer in a forest near
Yekaterinburg, where the royal family was killed, and enlisted Russian
and U.S. laboratories to conduct DNA tests.
Eduard Rossel, governor of the region 900 miles east of Moscow, said
tests done by a U.S. laboratory had identified the shards as those of
Alexei and Maria.
"This has confirmed that indeed it is the children," he said. "We have
now found the entire family."
"The main genetic laboratory in the United States has concluded its
work with a full confirmation of our own laboratories' work," Rossel
said.
He did not specify the laboratory, but a genetic research team working
at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has been involved in
the process. Evgeny Rogaev, who headed the team that tested the
remains in Moscow and at the medical school in Worcester, Mass., was
called into the case by the Russian Federation Prosecutor's Office.
He told The Associated Press on Wednesday that he delivered the
results to Russian authorities, but said it was up to the prosecutor's
office =97 not him or his team =97 to disclose the findings.
"The most difficult work is done and we have delivered to them our
expert analysis, but we are still working," he said. "Scientifically,
we want to make the most complete investigation possible."
The test results were based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, the
genetic material passed down only from mothers to children. That DNA
is more stable than nuclear DNA =97 the material inherited from the
father's side =97 especially when remains are badly damaged.
In this case, the bone fragments were so shattered and burned that
Rogaev's team first had to determine whether enough uncontaminated
genetic material still existed for testing.
The delicate work proved that, indeed, useful DNA could be extracted
from a very small amount of the material =97 a critical fact, since they
wanted to preserve as much of the bone fragments as possible out of
respect for the victims.
The researchers also compared DNA from the remains with those of
Empress Alexandra, who was a granddaughter of Britain's Queen Victoria
and a distant relative of Prince Philip, the husband of Queen
Elizabeth II.
With the mitochondrial analysis completed, the team is working on the
nuclear DNA analysis and comparing the samples to paternal relatives
of the czar's family.
That information, along with conclusions already delivered to the
Russian prosecutors, eventually will be submitted to a professional
journal for peer review and publication.
It was unclear if the Russian Orthodox Church will recognize them as
genuine. The church's press service said no one could comment on
Wednesday's announcement.
It was also unclear whether the descendents of the royal family would
accept the identification. Lukyanov said neither he nor his clients
had received confirmation.
Lukyanov's efforts to get the government to declare the royal family
victims of political repression have been repeatedly rejected by
Russian courts, which have said the family's killing was premeditated
murder, not a political reprisal.
He said Russia had much to do to overcome its tortured past.
"They say that as long as the last soldier remains unburied, the war
continues," Lukyanov told AP. "So long as the last victim of Bolshevik
terror and the Communist regime remains unrehabilitiated, the
repression will continue."
___
Associated Press writers Carley Petesch in New York and Stephanie
Reitz in Hartford, Conn., contributed to this re****t.
Copyright =A9 2008 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.
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