How much money did the royal family have? Estimates vary: from such that the Romanovs were the richest men of their time to such that they had to save. In any case, it is interesting where the money of the royal family went after the revolution.
In 2012, the US portal Celebrity Net Worth made the rating of the twenty-five richest people of the millennium. In this rating, Nicholas II was on the fifth place in the general list. His state of Celebrity Net Worth estimated at 300 billion dollars (in terms of modern money). Since the royal family was canonized, Nicholas II in the ranking is listed as "the richest saint".
At once we will make a reservation, the American portal does not give any documents confirming the capital of Nicholas II in 900 million dollars (before recount). Therefore we will check the numbers ourselves.
After the February Revolution, one of the primary tasks of the Provisional Government was the discrediting of the royal family. It was necessary to tell the people about how free and luxurious the life of the tsar and his family was, what fabulous capitals lay on their foreign accounts.
The first head of the Provisional Government, Prince George Lvov, took up the cause. The Cabinet officials were mostly loyal to the new government, so it was not necessary to look for a long time. In 1920, during interrogation in the case of the execution of the royal family conducted by Nikolai Sokolov, an investigator for especially important cases at the Omsk District Court, Prince Lvov recalled: "The question of the means belonging to the Tsar's Family was also resolved. The family, of course, had to live on their personal means. The government was to bear only those expenses that were caused by its own activities at the address of the Family. Their personal funds have been clarified. They turned out to be small.
In one of the foreign banks, counting all the means of the Family, it turned out to be 14 million rubles. They did not have anything else. "
In the book of the historian Igor Zimin "The royal money. Revenues and expenses of the Romanov family "is given the following alignment: on May 1, 1917, the royal family had: in interest-bearing securities 12,110,600 rubles; on current accounts - 358,128 rubles 27 kopecks, in cash - 3,083 rubles. 42 kopecks. Total amount: 12,471,811 rubles 69 kopecks. At the dollar rate of that time (1/11) - 1,13 million dollars.
In August 1917 a book by an anonymous author, The Fall of the Romanovs, was published in Petrograd. The identity of the anonymous person is not established, but it is obvious that he was close to the commissar of the Provisional Government Golovin, who was responsible for clarifying the information about the capital of the royal family.
In this book, the following figures indicate the personal resources of the august family: Nicholas II - 908,000 rubles; Alexandra Feodorovna - 1,006,400 rubles; Tsesarevich - 1 425 700 rubles; The Grand Duchess Olga Nikolayevna - 3 185 500 rubles: Grand Duchess Tatiana Nikolayevna - 2 118 500 rubles; The Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna - 1,854,430 rubles; The Grand Duchess Anastasia Nikolaevna - 1 612 500 rubles. Total: 12 111 030 rubles.
As can be seen, there were no millions of dollars for the royal family, and according to these calculations, although the author of the "Fall of the Romanovs" also wrote about the mysterious accounts in foreign banks. What are these accounts?
Did the royal family have accounts in foreign banks? The answer to this question is better to be found in the works of researchers, and not on American sites with questionable data sources.
The most serious study on this topic was conducted by the British historian and financier, City William Clarke, author of the bestselling book The Lost Treasures of the Kings.
He found out that Alexander III's family kept large sums in the Bank of England. Entering the throne in 1894, Nikolai Alexandrovich decided to close foreign accounts for an understandable reason: the country at that time was forced to resort to foreign borrowings, which resulted in a rather absurd situation: the tsar gave the Russian Empire money at a solid interest. At the time, closing the account and transferring funds was not an easy task, so the process lasted six years.
Historian Oleg Budnitsky, who was looking for information about tsar's accounts in foreign banks, found a folder in one of the English archives with the talking title "On the foreign possessions of the late emperor". In it there were stories on this topic of persons who had a direct relationship to the finances of the Russian Empire.
Prince Sergei Gagarin, who worked in the Ministry of the Court, said: "During the riots in Russia in 1905-1906, by order of the Minister of the Imperial Court, the sums of about 4-4.5 million, which belonged to the sovereign's sovereign children, were transferred abroad rubles. These funds were formed by the accumulation of released, according to the basic laws, appropriations for the maintenance of the children of the reigning emperor. These money were deposited in the bank of Mendelssohn's bank in Berlin. "
Gagarin, thus, directly says that in 1905, Nicholas II transferred funds abroad, intended for children.
On accounts in the German bank of Mendelssohn, one of the managers of the means of Russian emigration, the attache in the US, wrote: "As far as I know, only the Mendelssohns in Berlin had small deposits of Russian interest, made by the sovereign in the name of each of her children. If I'm not mistaken, the nominal amount of each of the deposits was 250,000 rubles. "
The question of the foreign accounts of Nicholas II was compelled to be raised already in the 1920s, in connection with the appearance in Germany of the first "Anastasia", which spoke of ostensibly owed money to her.
The Russian emigration was agitated by this "resurrection". In Europe, there were many former officials and the closest august family. In the end, it was decided to convene a commission and once and for all come to an agreement on a sensitive issue.
Such a commission was collected on February 26, 1929. Her verdict was unequivocal: "The emperor and his august family had no property abroad, except for the small capitals of the prince's daughters, about one million marks each, in the Mendelssohn bank in Berlin."
The former adviser to the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Boris Nolde, stressed that in connection with the First World War, "these sums were sequestered and then, unclaimed, were probably all the consequences of inflation and turned into nothing."
In March 1930, the minutes of this meeting were published in the Paris newspaper Vozrozhdenie.
In 1934 the court of the Central District of Berlin recognized the heirs of the royal money. They were the Grand Duchess Ksenia and Olga, the Countess of Brasov, and the relatives of the deceased princesses along the lines of the Empress Alexandra Feodorovna.
As Boris Nolde said, inflation depreciated the deposits. The court issued official papers for the right of inheritance only four years after the determination of the heirs, in 1938. The amount was really ridiculous: less than 25 thousand pounds sterling. Divided among all the heirs, these funds represented almost nothing. Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna did not even take away the share she owed her.