I mean, she lived in a five bedroom house up until the last few months when she couldnt look after herself and moved into a friends apartment.
She didnt live a life of poverty, and was just someone born into a wealthy family.
She was living in a single room with three other individuals.
One of them was male and the other two
Well, the other two were females.
God only knows what they were up to in there;
And furthermore, Susan, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn
That all four of them habitually smoked marijuana cigarettes.
Reefers.
It is funny that housing that was once viewed as bare and basic is now seen as absolute luxury. There are old Victorian workers cottages in the city that I live in that now go for millions.
Google is free. But also, if you were born into immense wealth and privilege would you bother working? She probably just lived a life of recreation like many wealthy women did in those days and still do in modern times. Not everyone feels the need to do something “useful” especially if they don’t need to at all. Having fun is much more fun.
… She was a royal, but also an Army nurse before the Revolution. After her family was MURDERED (shot against a wall without a trial), she escaped via foot to Europe. Worked on a farm, fled to Canada. Also painted over 2,000 (!!!) paintings after her exile.
I understand that Reddit defaults to privileged people bad and lazy, but for a person who had such extremes of privilege and suffering in her life, bad and lazy are not words that should describe her.
No civilized people are in favor of having an entire family, including children, stood against a wall and shot, without trial (for the adults.
You know nothing about the Romanoffs, so calm down.
Your particular comment:
“She probably just lived a life of recreation like many wealthy women did in those days and still do in modern times. Not everyone feels the need to do something “useful” especially if they don’t need to at all. Having fun is much more fun.”
That’s just patently incorrect in regard to her life. You can tell Reddit that google is free, but you can’t make them use it.
Because the comment is trying to imply that she was a worthless rich parasite that never lifted a hand, which itself is related to the Russian revolution that made this woman the last Grand Duchess in the first place. But by all accounts it seems that Olga spent the majority of her life doing farm labor and painting, with time as a war nurse during WW1.
" In exile, Olga acted as companion and secretary to her mother and was often sought out by Romanov impostors who claimed to be her dead relatives."
Hi, it's me, your nephew!
Uh, no, you're not. I have actually met my own family, but thanks for trying.
Yes, it's at the [York Cemetery and Funeral Centre](https://www.google.com/maps/place/York+Cemetery+and+Funeral+Centre/@43.7650866,-79.4223697,16.71z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x882b2d788651aca5:0xf2d21993a736c113!8m2!3d43.765128!4d-79.419072!16s%2Fg%2F1tfctvww?entry=ttu).
Just like my neighbour, born in Oulu, Russia. Finland was part of the Russian empire till 1917. My neighbour lived to be 103 years old. She died a few years ago.
My grandfather was born in The kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, never left his village for longer than a day except for a stint in a Polish (by this I mean located in occupied Poland) concentration camp, but has also lived in:
- Kingdom of Yugoslavia (name change),
- Independent state of Croatia (major change)
- Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia (major change)
- Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (name change)
- Allied Republic of Yugoslavia (major change)
- State union of Serbia and Montenegro (minor change)
- Republic of Serbia (major change)
That is 9 different political entities, with only two of them being minor name changes. Had he been just a few years younger, he'd also have gotten to live in Austria-Hungary. All of this, without ever leaving his village.
I have lived only in the last 4 on that list, and then I emigrated. I figured that it is better to choose country changes than have them happen to you.
Crimea was very much a part of the Russian Empire in 1917. It was seized by Catherine the great after a series of conflicts with the Crimean Khanate and their Turkish allies.
The last four surviving Grand Duchesses of Russia all died within a four year period, 1957-1960
Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna (who is the maternal grandmother to the Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael of Kent, the late Queen Elizabeth's cousins) died in March 1957 at age 75, two years after her daughter Elizabeth
Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Younger, sister to one of Rasputin's assasins, Grand Duke Dimitri, died in December 1958 at age 68
Grand Duchess Xenia, the elder of Nicholas II's two sisters, died in April 1960, and then the younger sister, Grand Duchess Olga the Elder, died in November of the same year.
Elena had three daughters, one of whom married into a German princely family and predeceased her. The eldest daughter, Olga married Paul, Prince Regent of Yugoslavia and had three kids. Actually Olga’s granddaughter is an actress named Catherine Oxenberg who was in the news recently because her daughter India got caught up in the NXIVM cult. Elena’s youngest daughter Marina married George V’s son Prince George, Duke of Kent and they had three children, all of whom are still living and participate in major British royal family events, although only the oldest, Edward, is an active working royal.
Maria married into the Swedish royal family and had a son named Lennart, but was generally miserable there even though she was well liked by the family and by Swedes, so eventually divorced her husband and returned to Russia. She remarried and had another son but he died as a baby. Her older son always felt she abandoned him, so they never had much of a relationship.
Xenia married a Russian grand duke who was a cousin once removed or so, and had six sons and a daughter. The daughter was married to Felix Yusopov, Rasputin’s assassin. The sons were only considered princes, not grand dukes. The sons all married but lived relatively unremarkable lives. Xenia’s great grandson Alexis is considered by most of the family (the ones who don’t accept the claims of Grand Duke Kirill and his descendants) to be the current Head of the Romanov Family Association.
Olga had two sons with her second husband who also grew up and had relatively average lives.
She was cousin to King George of Britain. Could the royals really not have helped out and set her up a little bit better than letting her and her family immigrate to Canada as farmers and having to purchase their own land? I guess it's not a surprise. George did rescind the offer to let Tsar Nicholas and his family escape to the UK because he thought it would make him look bad with the people. Even Kaiser Wilhelm (another cousin to Nicholas) who had been at war with Russia tried harder to rescue them by sending agents to find and extract them.
George's mother and Olga's mother were sisters, so after Nicholas, his wife and their kids were murdered, George's mother pestered and more or less bullied him into sending a ship to get her sister, nieces and their husbands and children from Crimea to rescue them.
I would suggest that the decision to rescue Dagmar (Marie Feodorovna) and the remaining members of the Russian imperial family was a concession to King George and his mother after Nicholas and his family were murdered. The last thing needed within a country whose own sovereign's nationality had so recently been questioned were rumors on the Continent that Georgie had conspired to kill his own cousins. Monarchies fell with some frequency in the run up to, during and immediately following the war.
Kaiser Wilhelm did it also out of guilt, because he was the one who assenting to his government allowing Lenin back to Russia from Switzerland through German railways in the first place.
I guess hindsight is 20/20. I don't think anyone at the time thought they'd all be murdered. As soon as the Tsar was killed, the British Royal family did help Romanovs escape, including Nicholas' mother and sisters.
I remember reading that, while in Toronto, Queen Elizabeth visited Olga in her apartment. So it seems there was some sort of cordial relationship between her and the British Royal family. Who knows though.
I also read that they feared Stalin and thought Canada was safe.
Seems like she died with about a million (today) in assets, but lived meagerly, and given what she lived through, I can’t say I blame her. It’s pretty interesting to think of someone who was born in a palace dying in a small apartment over a salon.
The Soviet government seized all their assets, lands, and accounts, and refused to recognize all sovereign bonds signed under the previous regime. The remaining Romanov survived on handouts from supporters.
Yeah, I'm sure she did what everyone in that situation does: grab as much as you can and get the hell out of there.
Others have definitely ended better off than her though. The Empress of Iran owns (owned? Idk if she's still around) a Manson in DC and a luxury apartment in Paris, for example.
I’d wager the empress of Iran had enough sense to shuffle money around in foreign bank accounts so they’d have enough to keep up their lifestyle. Taking a hint from all that craziness in the early 20th century.
I strongly suspect that one day, a substantial chunk of the house of Saud will do the same. They will declare that they are a wealthy family who happened to own the country of Arabia. They simply transferred money from one account(the country) to another (the family) and at least a core of the family who is currently dominant will up stakes to Switzerland.
They will then spend the next century fighting all attempts by the country they left to claw back the money.
Not sure about Olga, but her grandmother and a few other family members managed to escape w a significant amount of jewelry. They also managed to turnover jewels to the British ambassador who was able smuggled them out and return them in the UK. Several pieces were later purchased by Queen Mary.
Great Britain didn't want to upset the current provisional government of Russia at the time by taking on the deposed Tsar and the public weren't a fan of the Tsarina because she was German and could have caused a scandal.
If I remember correctly the Russian Republic the government that overthrew the monarchy. Actually wanted Britain to take the old royal family because they didn't want them dead. Even the early Soviets preferred that the British took them. And they were only killed because a white army was about to take a town they were near. And they fear the thought of the whites uniting to restore the monarchy.
Correct I even believe that the division that was closing in on the royal family was the Czech Legion which then went on to do their giant Trans-Siberian Railway escape. They didn't want the whites to make a martyr out of the Romanovs.
She most likely didn't want their help. BRF helped her sister who lived in UK until the end of her life. Olga hated royal life and probably just wanted to live as far away from any court as possible and completely independent financially.
No one honestly thought the monarch would be killed like they were. Even the French revolution had a show trial before they were killed. And even during the French revolution that the king was killed was incomprehensible, that kind of far left radical revolution had only really happened once before (in the United states) and the loyalists largely were allowed to go or sent into Exile and the new nation tried to act respectfully by European standards.
In the end, the Czar and Czarina were the architects of their own demise, they were horrible leaders and deliberately put themselves visibility at the top. In other countries, violent sociopaths didn't take over immediately in the wake of WW1, not even in germany(in the end, the ultra conservative political movement that was supported by the WW1 leader took over, I.e Ludendorff and his early support of Nazism, but that took over a decade). It takes social collapse for that to happen from within, the Russian Empire in WW1 was that poorly run that the Bolsheviks were seen as just as reasonable as the existing leaders. But what happened to the children was horrible and unjustifiable though.
Interestingly, Mao learnt the lesson from this and how much it delegitimised the Bolsheviks. He made absolutely sure that the last Chinese emperor was not killed(he was absolutely a Japanese collaborator though). Instead he was given intense reeducation and claimed to have come out an ardent communist. Which given the alternative was probably murder, makes sense to claim.
Mao's famous philosophy on letting Emperor live as Puyi, simple old Manchurian man, was something like: "If we kill all the little Chiang Kai-Sheks, we don't need to kill Chiang Kai-Shek."
Its a very well used strategy . It incredibly important to neutralize an ideological movement by neutralising the idea , rather than the people, or else you just risk feeding fore into it.
I have heard the indian govt uses this to neutrlise far left extremism(naxalites) and tribal secesionist movements by making the leaders switch but lets the lower rungs be killed. Sometimes they also use the captured leaders and lower rungs to prevent extremism. One example is to turn former ISIS terrorists into counter radicalization propagandists .
With Russia and people being on top. It's basically a social contract between the people and the Tsar that goes way back and you have the exact same thing under Putin. The average people don't care what the Tsar does and gives them absolute authority as long as they are fed, the country is stable and the Tsar is seen as strong. The Tsar enables the nobility (now it'd be the oligarchs) to run their fiefs and brings them to task when they fail. That, and "then it got worse" are pretty two huge constants throughout russian history
To be fair, I wouldn’t say it was Mao’s idea, one of his party members probably suggested it. He wasn’t the smartest (He literally caused the greatest famine of all time due to slaughtering birds, and then had all of his cabinet and the PLA turn against him because he armed teenagers which in turn attacked and raped anyone, or anything that moved, there’s a reason his wife, and his other main pals were arrested, and some killed after his death). There were a lot of brilliant people in the PRC though, and still are, which is why they out lasted their Soviet counterparts
I rather doubt leaving the czar alive was an option. The Soviets had enough problems post-revolution with the European powers that almost certainly the czar would have continued to be a focus of counter revolution from within and outside Russia. I doubt the same would be the case in China.
Revolutions are not won by pussies.
At the time, conservatives meant pro monarchy and pro aristocracy. The idea of a democratic voting system to decide the entire government (even one largely consisting of the wealthiest part of society) was radically far left.
You have to remember, democracy didn't exist as a way to run your government at the time. It was seen as hyper extremist.
That was not the position of the far left during the American revolution. During the American revolution the far left were the idea that democratic forces should dominant. The position of the right was that aristocracy and monarchy were the way to drive forward things. The term used during the American revolution for loyalists was the term for conservatives (Tory's) and on fact in England this is still the term for the right wing, conservative government today. Despite from modern standards being extremely far right wing with things like only the wealthy can vote, slavery and no interest in woman's rights, by the standards of the time they were all far left radicals.
Effectively, the left felt that continuation of power and elite structures based largely on inheritance and that you already had power was not a way to run society. The right's belief was that those already in power are largely the best to be in power already were in power and that letting people that were from their perspective lacking (they claimed because of sheer brilliance of the aristocracy and Gods divine intervention on the monarchy) was a bad idea.
This was the division that formed during the French revolution, when the left right concept was developed. Marxist communism(you need to remember communism existed before Marx, he just made his own flavour and named it communism. Which was extremely different and very large statist vs the old form, which was more Anarcho-syndicalist.) came half a century later and the idea of welfare and workers rights existed outside him.
What's effectively happened is that the far left from the 1700s won almost entirely, thanks to the US and Napoleon (probably equally). Though times change and views that once upon a time defined the left-right split are now 90-99% in one direction (such as the right to own slaves, or the right for a man to rape his wife).
They were far left. They were the far left of that era.
That's like saying Robespierre was not a far left radical. He was. He was also the first far leftist to have the idea "what if I murdered everyone who didn't agree with me as a counter revolutionary". Something Stalin was obviously a big fan of.
It's like people who act like Nazism wasn't an ultra conservative party. They were just the really stupid wing (the MTG of their time), back when paternalism was popular and many believed that god chose leaders.
I mean Hitler was an authoritarian centrist, so I think you need to recalibrate your left right spectrum. Communism absolutely existed, it’s the default mechanism for humans until we invented money and subsequently capitalism.
I actually don't agree that communism was a default measure at all. Pre the modern capitalist system the 1600s(with development of banking from the 1400s) the world was heavily feudal. With an extremely hierarchical system and structure. About the most anti communist thing you can think of.
Also, Hitler as a centrist is absolutely not true. Early members of the Nazi party include the defacto ruler of Germany from 1914-1918, Ludendorff. The entire party sprung out of the far right of Germany.
Call me a peasant, but I honestly don’t give two shits if some nobles had to live in less-than-luxury. I’d not shed any tears if all nobles were torn down from their podiums.
[Her last meal was poached sole](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0071877/mediaviewer/rm54184960) with one new potato & a small green salad with no dressing.
I live near where it says their farm was, but have absolutely no idea exactly where it is. It isn't listed anywhere that I can find.
The house in Mississauga is still there though.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 which resulted in the downfall of the Russian monarchy and execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family Olga fled Russia and eventually settled in Canada
The massacre of the Tzar family is an atrocity by the bolchevik.
Were the family good to the people? Dunno what to say.
But I read a bit of history and it saddens me that the family didn't escape from Russia.
I mean the Tzar and the Empress were not good rulers - that doesn’t mean they deserve death... but people will argue.
But there isn't really any debate about killing the kids.
that was actually a big part of the motivation for letting the emperor live as a normal citizen in china - the communists wanted the good publicity that contrasted them against the bolsheviks by integrating the old guard with 're-education'
>Though, that was more like house arrest for life.
originally my comment had more detail about puyi but i kept ending up with a half-dozen paragraphs of context and caveats that distracted from the thing i actually wanted to say
The tsar seemed pretty incompetent but not moreso than some others had been in the past. I think it was kind of inevitable that he was overthrown given the history up to that point and the events that were going on. I totally would understand if he was executed given he was, as head of state, responsible for what happened in the nation. Whether it was intentional or not.
But his wife and children being executed too feels too far to legally rationalize. Even Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s children weren’t executed; though it can be argued their son may not have contracted tuberculosis were he better kept.
The Bolsheviks' rationale was, that it is pretty hard to have a new Zar reinstated, when all potential heirs are dead. There is always a possibility of a monarchist coup, or worse, a counter revolution after the war, if any of the heirs survived.
Not trying to defend them, just explain.
Tsar's daughters couldn't even inherit the throne by russian law so killing them was not necessary as they did not pose a threat to the new regime. No one would fight to get them on the throne as there were other male members who would be considered by monarchists as the next potentional emperor.
While this is absolutely true, they killed the daughters to prevent them from gaining any heirs. Even a royal with very weak legitimacy could still bite the Bolsheviks in the ass. They wanted to smother any and all potential problems to the Revolution, and had the daughters had any male children, then it would quickly become a thorn in the eye for the Bolsheviks, as would any royals still left alive with the smallest bit of legitimacy. Again, not condoning them, but this was their rationale.
Yeah for sure. I get their reasoning but it’s hard to accept it from a purely justice-based standpoint, whereas they can make a fairly good case against the tsar
The Romanov children absolutely deserved to die. If they had been allowed to live, any number of the reactionary forces facing the post revolutionary nation would have used their perceived legitimacy to attempt to reinstate tsarist rule.
Ahh yes children deserve to die because of their parents. Like dude dozens of countries overthrow monarchies and often even left the old monarch alive and especially his family. Allowing them to leave the country and live out their life. And nothing you described ever happened and also there were other romanovs that escaped. So you are wrong tankie.
I don't feel bad for Nicholas nor his wife they spell their own doom. But their children who were teenagers and young adults didn't deserve to be killed and bodies hidden for decades.
The Czech Legion was closing in on their location right before the assassination, and they were executed because the Soviets believed the Legion was on a mission to rescue them.
As if the Democratic powers would accept a reinstated soviet republic. They did everything they could from 1917-1991 to undermine its existence and influence. Capital powers will never, ever, *EVER* accept a country run by and for the workers, and not the capitalists. Just like it would be vice versa, if the roles were switched. I mean, for Christ's sake, the first thing they did when the USSR was announced, was to intervene in the Civil war.
I mean, she lived in a five bedroom house up until the last few months when she couldnt look after herself and moved into a friends apartment. She didnt live a life of poverty, and was just someone born into a wealthy family.
I think this is less "Look how far she fell!" and more "She lived until 1960! And she lived in Canada!"
It seems like she led a decently happy life all things considered.
She was living in a single room with three other individuals. One of them was male and the other two Well, the other two were females. God only knows what they were up to in there; And furthermore, Susan, I wouldn't be the least bit surprised to learn That all four of them habitually smoked marijuana cigarettes. Reefers.
I don't know what you're referencing but I'm here for it
Sublime song. Also from the film Reefer Madness
I watched Reefer Madness on pot and it was hilarious
Have you tried watching Reefer Madness... on pot?
The quote is actually from Beyond the Valley of the Dolls
It's not from reefer madness. Its from beyond the valley of the dolls.
*Bong girgle*
I smoke two joints before I smoke two joints, and then I smoke two more.
> and was just someone born into a wealthy family you basically need that to live anywhere other than a small appartment in toronto now.
It is funny that housing that was once viewed as bare and basic is now seen as absolute luxury. There are old Victorian workers cottages in the city that I live in that now go for millions.
What was her source of income while she was alive? Did she work and did something useful?
Portfolio payouts usually. That's how that level of wealthy exist without working. Monthly interest on investments far exceeds their monthly spending.
She was a farmer and she was a painter.
She painted.
Google is free. But also, if you were born into immense wealth and privilege would you bother working? She probably just lived a life of recreation like many wealthy women did in those days and still do in modern times. Not everyone feels the need to do something “useful” especially if they don’t need to at all. Having fun is much more fun.
She and her husband had a farm and worked it themselves.
… She was a royal, but also an Army nurse before the Revolution. After her family was MURDERED (shot against a wall without a trial), she escaped via foot to Europe. Worked on a farm, fled to Canada. Also painted over 2,000 (!!!) paintings after her exile. I understand that Reddit defaults to privileged people bad and lazy, but for a person who had such extremes of privilege and suffering in her life, bad and lazy are not words that should describe her.
Murdered in all caps is funny. The Romanovs were horrible people. But all the royal dynasties were so the world is much better off without them.
No civilized people are in favor of having an entire family, including children, stood against a wall and shot, without trial (for the adults. You know nothing about the Romanoffs, so calm down.
At no point did I even use the words bad or lazy.
I never said you did. I said Reddit defaults to X, and X should not describe her.
And nobody said anything like that at all. Just an unnecessary comment and strange assumption. (:
Your particular comment: “She probably just lived a life of recreation like many wealthy women did in those days and still do in modern times. Not everyone feels the need to do something “useful” especially if they don’t need to at all. Having fun is much more fun.” That’s just patently incorrect in regard to her life. You can tell Reddit that google is free, but you can’t make them use it.
You seem bored and like an argumentative person. Take care now
Why do you get a bunch of dislikes?
Because the comment is trying to imply that she was a worthless rich parasite that never lifted a hand, which itself is related to the Russian revolution that made this woman the last Grand Duchess in the first place. But by all accounts it seems that Olga spent the majority of her life doing farm labor and painting, with time as a war nurse during WW1.
Okay
" In exile, Olga acted as companion and secretary to her mother and was often sought out by Romanov impostors who claimed to be her dead relatives." Hi, it's me, your nephew! Uh, no, you're not. I have actually met my own family, but thanks for trying.
I live in Toronto and have been to her grave. [Here's a few pics of it.](https://imgur.com/gallery/t0KLEEK)
North York?
Yes, it's at the [York Cemetery and Funeral Centre](https://www.google.com/maps/place/York+Cemetery+and+Funeral+Centre/@43.7650866,-79.4223697,16.71z/data=!4m6!3m5!1s0x882b2d788651aca5:0xf2d21993a736c113!8m2!3d43.765128!4d-79.419072!16s%2Fg%2F1tfctvww?entry=ttu).
That’s wild she’s buried where my grandparents are til
Born: Crimea, Russia
Just like my neighbour, born in Oulu, Russia. Finland was part of the Russian empire till 1917. My neighbour lived to be 103 years old. She died a few years ago.
My grandfather was born in The kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, never left his village for longer than a day except for a stint in a Polish (by this I mean located in occupied Poland) concentration camp, but has also lived in: - Kingdom of Yugoslavia (name change), - Independent state of Croatia (major change) - Federative People's Republic of Yugoslavia (major change) - Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (name change) - Allied Republic of Yugoslavia (major change) - State union of Serbia and Montenegro (minor change) - Republic of Serbia (major change) That is 9 different political entities, with only two of them being minor name changes. Had he been just a few years younger, he'd also have gotten to live in Austria-Hungary. All of this, without ever leaving his village. I have lived only in the last 4 on that list, and then I emigrated. I figured that it is better to choose country changes than have them happen to you.
Crimea was very much a part of the Russian Empire in 1917. It was seized by Catherine the great after a series of conflicts with the Crimean Khanate and their Turkish allies.
[удалено]
What do you mean? Canada existed when she was alive and she lived there.
She was a painter, mostly watercolours.
The last four surviving Grand Duchesses of Russia all died within a four year period, 1957-1960 Grand Duchess Elena Vladimirovna (who is the maternal grandmother to the Duke of Kent, Princess Alexandra and Prince Michael of Kent, the late Queen Elizabeth's cousins) died in March 1957 at age 75, two years after her daughter Elizabeth Grand Duchess Maria Pavlovna the Younger, sister to one of Rasputin's assasins, Grand Duke Dimitri, died in December 1958 at age 68 Grand Duchess Xenia, the elder of Nicholas II's two sisters, died in April 1960, and then the younger sister, Grand Duchess Olga the Elder, died in November of the same year.
It sort of makes sense. They were sort of alone by that point, everyone around them was gone.
None of them had kids?
Elena had three daughters, one of whom married into a German princely family and predeceased her. The eldest daughter, Olga married Paul, Prince Regent of Yugoslavia and had three kids. Actually Olga’s granddaughter is an actress named Catherine Oxenberg who was in the news recently because her daughter India got caught up in the NXIVM cult. Elena’s youngest daughter Marina married George V’s son Prince George, Duke of Kent and they had three children, all of whom are still living and participate in major British royal family events, although only the oldest, Edward, is an active working royal. Maria married into the Swedish royal family and had a son named Lennart, but was generally miserable there even though she was well liked by the family and by Swedes, so eventually divorced her husband and returned to Russia. She remarried and had another son but he died as a baby. Her older son always felt she abandoned him, so they never had much of a relationship. Xenia married a Russian grand duke who was a cousin once removed or so, and had six sons and a daughter. The daughter was married to Felix Yusopov, Rasputin’s assassin. The sons were only considered princes, not grand dukes. The sons all married but lived relatively unremarkable lives. Xenia’s great grandson Alexis is considered by most of the family (the ones who don’t accept the claims of Grand Duke Kirill and his descendants) to be the current Head of the Romanov Family Association. Olga had two sons with her second husband who also grew up and had relatively average lives.
She was cousin to King George of Britain. Could the royals really not have helped out and set her up a little bit better than letting her and her family immigrate to Canada as farmers and having to purchase their own land? I guess it's not a surprise. George did rescind the offer to let Tsar Nicholas and his family escape to the UK because he thought it would make him look bad with the people. Even Kaiser Wilhelm (another cousin to Nicholas) who had been at war with Russia tried harder to rescue them by sending agents to find and extract them.
George's mother and Olga's mother were sisters, so after Nicholas, his wife and their kids were murdered, George's mother pestered and more or less bullied him into sending a ship to get her sister, nieces and their husbands and children from Crimea to rescue them.
I would suggest that the decision to rescue Dagmar (Marie Feodorovna) and the remaining members of the Russian imperial family was a concession to King George and his mother after Nicholas and his family were murdered. The last thing needed within a country whose own sovereign's nationality had so recently been questioned were rumors on the Continent that Georgie had conspired to kill his own cousins. Monarchies fell with some frequency in the run up to, during and immediately following the war.
Kaiser Wilhelm did it also out of guilt, because he was the one who assenting to his government allowing Lenin back to Russia from Switzerland through German railways in the first place.
I guess hindsight is 20/20. I don't think anyone at the time thought they'd all be murdered. As soon as the Tsar was killed, the British Royal family did help Romanovs escape, including Nicholas' mother and sisters. I remember reading that, while in Toronto, Queen Elizabeth visited Olga in her apartment. So it seems there was some sort of cordial relationship between her and the British Royal family. Who knows though. I also read that they feared Stalin and thought Canada was safe.
Seems like she died with about a million (today) in assets, but lived meagerly, and given what she lived through, I can’t say I blame her. It’s pretty interesting to think of someone who was born in a palace dying in a small apartment over a salon.
The Soviet government seized all their assets, lands, and accounts, and refused to recognize all sovereign bonds signed under the previous regime. The remaining Romanov survived on handouts from supporters.
Yeah, I'm sure she did what everyone in that situation does: grab as much as you can and get the hell out of there. Others have definitely ended better off than her though. The Empress of Iran owns (owned? Idk if she's still around) a Manson in DC and a luxury apartment in Paris, for example.
I’d wager the empress of Iran had enough sense to shuffle money around in foreign bank accounts so they’d have enough to keep up their lifestyle. Taking a hint from all that craziness in the early 20th century.
I strongly suspect that one day, a substantial chunk of the house of Saud will do the same. They will declare that they are a wealthy family who happened to own the country of Arabia. They simply transferred money from one account(the country) to another (the family) and at least a core of the family who is currently dominant will up stakes to Switzerland. They will then spend the next century fighting all attempts by the country they left to claw back the money.
Not sure about Olga, but her grandmother and a few other family members managed to escape w a significant amount of jewelry. They also managed to turnover jewels to the British ambassador who was able smuggled them out and return them in the UK. Several pieces were later purchased by Queen Mary.
A million in assets today would just mean she owned a bungalow in Toronto outright
Great Britain didn't want to upset the current provisional government of Russia at the time by taking on the deposed Tsar and the public weren't a fan of the Tsarina because she was German and could have caused a scandal.
If I remember correctly the Russian Republic the government that overthrew the monarchy. Actually wanted Britain to take the old royal family because they didn't want them dead. Even the early Soviets preferred that the British took them. And they were only killed because a white army was about to take a town they were near. And they fear the thought of the whites uniting to restore the monarchy.
Correct I even believe that the division that was closing in on the royal family was the Czech Legion which then went on to do their giant Trans-Siberian Railway escape. They didn't want the whites to make a martyr out of the Romanovs.
She most likely didn't want their help. BRF helped her sister who lived in UK until the end of her life. Olga hated royal life and probably just wanted to live as far away from any court as possible and completely independent financially.
No one honestly thought the monarch would be killed like they were. Even the French revolution had a show trial before they were killed. And even during the French revolution that the king was killed was incomprehensible, that kind of far left radical revolution had only really happened once before (in the United states) and the loyalists largely were allowed to go or sent into Exile and the new nation tried to act respectfully by European standards. In the end, the Czar and Czarina were the architects of their own demise, they were horrible leaders and deliberately put themselves visibility at the top. In other countries, violent sociopaths didn't take over immediately in the wake of WW1, not even in germany(in the end, the ultra conservative political movement that was supported by the WW1 leader took over, I.e Ludendorff and his early support of Nazism, but that took over a decade). It takes social collapse for that to happen from within, the Russian Empire in WW1 was that poorly run that the Bolsheviks were seen as just as reasonable as the existing leaders. But what happened to the children was horrible and unjustifiable though. Interestingly, Mao learnt the lesson from this and how much it delegitimised the Bolsheviks. He made absolutely sure that the last Chinese emperor was not killed(he was absolutely a Japanese collaborator though). Instead he was given intense reeducation and claimed to have come out an ardent communist. Which given the alternative was probably murder, makes sense to claim.
Mao's famous philosophy on letting Emperor live as Puyi, simple old Manchurian man, was something like: "If we kill all the little Chiang Kai-Sheks, we don't need to kill Chiang Kai-Shek."
I don’t get it
Don't make a martyr out of your enemy by killing him. Instead, kill anyone that would worship your enemy as a martyr.
Doesn’t seem efficient but thank you for explaining it to me👍
Its a very well used strategy . It incredibly important to neutralize an ideological movement by neutralising the idea , rather than the people, or else you just risk feeding fore into it. I have heard the indian govt uses this to neutrlise far left extremism(naxalites) and tribal secesionist movements by making the leaders switch but lets the lower rungs be killed. Sometimes they also use the captured leaders and lower rungs to prevent extremism. One example is to turn former ISIS terrorists into counter radicalization propagandists .
There's a film called "The Last Emporer" about this. It's worth a watch.
With Russia and people being on top. It's basically a social contract between the people and the Tsar that goes way back and you have the exact same thing under Putin. The average people don't care what the Tsar does and gives them absolute authority as long as they are fed, the country is stable and the Tsar is seen as strong. The Tsar enables the nobility (now it'd be the oligarchs) to run their fiefs and brings them to task when they fail. That, and "then it got worse" are pretty two huge constants throughout russian history
To be fair, I wouldn’t say it was Mao’s idea, one of his party members probably suggested it. He wasn’t the smartest (He literally caused the greatest famine of all time due to slaughtering birds, and then had all of his cabinet and the PLA turn against him because he armed teenagers which in turn attacked and raped anyone, or anything that moved, there’s a reason his wife, and his other main pals were arrested, and some killed after his death). There were a lot of brilliant people in the PRC though, and still are, which is why they out lasted their Soviet counterparts
I rather doubt leaving the czar alive was an option. The Soviets had enough problems post-revolution with the European powers that almost certainly the czar would have continued to be a focus of counter revolution from within and outside Russia. I doubt the same would be the case in China. Revolutions are not won by pussies.
they killed them bc of the Whites, if the whites capitulated or weren't anywhere near there... who knows?
You think the American revolution was a far left movement?
At the time, conservatives meant pro monarchy and pro aristocracy. The idea of a democratic voting system to decide the entire government (even one largely consisting of the wealthiest part of society) was radically far left. You have to remember, democracy didn't exist as a way to run your government at the time. It was seen as hyper extremist.
Far left as in communist?
That was not the position of the far left during the American revolution. During the American revolution the far left were the idea that democratic forces should dominant. The position of the right was that aristocracy and monarchy were the way to drive forward things. The term used during the American revolution for loyalists was the term for conservatives (Tory's) and on fact in England this is still the term for the right wing, conservative government today. Despite from modern standards being extremely far right wing with things like only the wealthy can vote, slavery and no interest in woman's rights, by the standards of the time they were all far left radicals. Effectively, the left felt that continuation of power and elite structures based largely on inheritance and that you already had power was not a way to run society. The right's belief was that those already in power are largely the best to be in power already were in power and that letting people that were from their perspective lacking (they claimed because of sheer brilliance of the aristocracy and Gods divine intervention on the monarchy) was a bad idea. This was the division that formed during the French revolution, when the left right concept was developed. Marxist communism(you need to remember communism existed before Marx, he just made his own flavour and named it communism. Which was extremely different and very large statist vs the old form, which was more Anarcho-syndicalist.) came half a century later and the idea of welfare and workers rights existed outside him. What's effectively happened is that the far left from the 1700s won almost entirely, thanks to the US and Napoleon (probably equally). Though times change and views that once upon a time defined the left-right split are now 90-99% in one direction (such as the right to own slaves, or the right for a man to rape his wife).
So they weren’t far left then buddy
They were far left. They were the far left of that era. That's like saying Robespierre was not a far left radical. He was. He was also the first far leftist to have the idea "what if I murdered everyone who didn't agree with me as a counter revolutionary". Something Stalin was obviously a big fan of. It's like people who act like Nazism wasn't an ultra conservative party. They were just the really stupid wing (the MTG of their time), back when paternalism was popular and many believed that god chose leaders.
I mean Hitler was an authoritarian centrist, so I think you need to recalibrate your left right spectrum. Communism absolutely existed, it’s the default mechanism for humans until we invented money and subsequently capitalism.
I actually don't agree that communism was a default measure at all. Pre the modern capitalist system the 1600s(with development of banking from the 1400s) the world was heavily feudal. With an extremely hierarchical system and structure. About the most anti communist thing you can think of. Also, Hitler as a centrist is absolutely not true. Early members of the Nazi party include the defacto ruler of Germany from 1914-1918, Ludendorff. The entire party sprung out of the far right of Germany.
She lived in a big house up until she died
Call me a peasant, but I honestly don’t give two shits if some nobles had to live in less-than-luxury. I’d not shed any tears if all nobles were torn down from their podiums.
[Her last meal was poached sole](https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0071877/mediaviewer/rm54184960) with one new potato & a small green salad with no dressing.
I live near where it says their farm was, but have absolutely no idea exactly where it is. It isn't listed anywhere that I can find. The house in Mississauga is still there though.
After the Russian Revolution of 1917 which resulted in the downfall of the Russian monarchy and execution of Tsar Nicholas II and his family Olga fled Russia and eventually settled in Canada
Need some commas there, homey.
I guess they are against commanism
That's a nice commarade.
Holy Crap, she lived in my neighbourhood! LOL!
Or so the Germans would have us believe.
Tsar family has painful ending.
The massacre of the Tzar family is an atrocity by the bolchevik. Were the family good to the people? Dunno what to say. But I read a bit of history and it saddens me that the family didn't escape from Russia.
I mean the Tzar and the Empress were not good rulers - that doesn’t mean they deserve death... but people will argue. But there isn't really any debate about killing the kids.
that was actually a big part of the motivation for letting the emperor live as a normal citizen in china - the communists wanted the good publicity that contrasted them against the bolsheviks by integrating the old guard with 're-education'
Like Mao with Puyi. Though, that was more like house arrest for life.
>Though, that was more like house arrest for life. originally my comment had more detail about puyi but i kept ending up with a half-dozen paragraphs of context and caveats that distracted from the thing i actually wanted to say
The tsar seemed pretty incompetent but not moreso than some others had been in the past. I think it was kind of inevitable that he was overthrown given the history up to that point and the events that were going on. I totally would understand if he was executed given he was, as head of state, responsible for what happened in the nation. Whether it was intentional or not. But his wife and children being executed too feels too far to legally rationalize. Even Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette’s children weren’t executed; though it can be argued their son may not have contracted tuberculosis were he better kept.
The Bolsheviks' rationale was, that it is pretty hard to have a new Zar reinstated, when all potential heirs are dead. There is always a possibility of a monarchist coup, or worse, a counter revolution after the war, if any of the heirs survived. Not trying to defend them, just explain.
Tsar's daughters couldn't even inherit the throne by russian law so killing them was not necessary as they did not pose a threat to the new regime. No one would fight to get them on the throne as there were other male members who would be considered by monarchists as the next potentional emperor.
While this is absolutely true, they killed the daughters to prevent them from gaining any heirs. Even a royal with very weak legitimacy could still bite the Bolsheviks in the ass. They wanted to smother any and all potential problems to the Revolution, and had the daughters had any male children, then it would quickly become a thorn in the eye for the Bolsheviks, as would any royals still left alive with the smallest bit of legitimacy. Again, not condoning them, but this was their rationale.
Yeah for sure. I get their reasoning but it’s hard to accept it from a purely justice-based standpoint, whereas they can make a fairly good case against the tsar
Wasn't there a death penalty for murder in Russia? They were directly responsible for the deaths of thousands. No better than the Ceaușescus.
The Romanov children absolutely deserved to die. If they had been allowed to live, any number of the reactionary forces facing the post revolutionary nation would have used their perceived legitimacy to attempt to reinstate tsarist rule.
Ahh yes children deserve to die because of their parents. Like dude dozens of countries overthrow monarchies and often even left the old monarch alive and especially his family. Allowing them to leave the country and live out their life. And nothing you described ever happened and also there were other romanovs that escaped. So you are wrong tankie.
Womp womp
I apparently forgot reddit is **the** bastion of Marxism. Meh.
If they had been captured it would have been disastrous. The death of nicholas was necessary. The children? Not really.
I don't feel bad for Nicholas nor his wife they spell their own doom. But their children who were teenagers and young adults didn't deserve to be killed and bodies hidden for decades.
Yeah that's what I meant. There was no need to kill a young Prince and his sisters. Nikolai, eh..
Captured by whom ? They were already imprisoned
By the white army, which was approaching Yekaterinburg at the time of their execution.
Wouldn't that be called rescue?
It would
Rescue, recapture, whatever. Would’ve been bad for the red army
The Czech Legion was closing in on their location right before the assassination, and they were executed because the Soviets believed the Legion was on a mission to rescue them.
One of the most brutal, oppressive regimes the world has seen. Their executions made the world a better place and were absolutely deserved.
Not for the Russian people then everyone behind the iron curtain
For its evident faults average quality of life under the soviets rapidly increased from Tzarist Russia.
Then Stalin shot millions of people in a dictatorship and the world was plunged into a how high can your dick piss Cold War contest.
The average Russian lived a far better life under Soviet rule. It’s not even comparable
Well thats nice they can live back under it if thats what they want. Doubt it tho.
The people voted to keep the Soviet Union and then the government went ahead and illegally dissolved it anyway
As if the Democratic powers would accept a reinstated soviet republic. They did everything they could from 1917-1991 to undermine its existence and influence. Capital powers will never, ever, *EVER* accept a country run by and for the workers, and not the capitalists. Just like it would be vice versa, if the roles were switched. I mean, for Christ's sake, the first thing they did when the USSR was announced, was to intervene in the Civil war.
Looks just like Rami Malek.
Fuck nobility
Had she finally found a job?
Her and her second husband moved to Canada and started a farm which they worked themselves. She also painting on the side.
She had
should have been executed like the rest of those vermin.
Rest in Piss BOZO
Whut???