The Romanoff Dynasty [also transliterated as Romanov] ruled Russia for over 300 years, from 1613 to 1917. After the foundational Riurik dynasty ended with the death of Ivan the Terrible’s son Fedor in 1598, Russia entered a period of dynastic turmoil, internecine conflict, and foreign invasion known as the “Time of Troubles.” Finally, in 1613, after a popular militia drove out Polish invaders and restored order, an assembly of popular representatives [zemskii sobor] elected Mikhail Romanoff, the son of a prominent boyar [noble] family to serve as Tsar.
Many of the Russian Tsars whose names are most familiar to Americans were members of the Romanoff dynasty: Peter the Great (ruled 1682-1725), worked to make Russia a great power, westernized Russian culture, and founded the city of St. Petersburg; Catherine the Great (ruled 1762-1796) built on Peter’s legacy, extending the boundaries of the Russian Empire to the south and the west; Alexander I (ruled 1801-1825), was emperor during the Napoleonic Wars; and Alexander II (ruled 1855-1881) finally emancipated Russia’s serfs, as well as inaugurating the era of “Great Reforms.”
The rule of the Romanoff dynasty ended in March 1917, during the First World War, when Tsar Nicholas II was forced to abdicate due to a popular uprising known as the February Revolution. After the Bolsheviks seized power in Russia in October 1917 and proclaimed Soviet power, members of the Romanoff dynasty suffered increased persecution as Russia devolved into civil war. The former ruler Nicholas II, his wife, and children were executed in Ekaterinburg in July 1918. Other Romanoffs were executed elsewhere in Russia. Some managed to escape from Russia, including Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna and her daughter Ksenia Aleksandrovna, great-grandmother and grandmother, respectively, of Prince Nikita Nikitich Romanoff. Surviving members of the Romanoff family made lives in exile, including in France, Great Britain, and the United States.
Prince Nikita Nikitich Romanoff was born in England in 1923 and was the son of Prince Nikita Aleksandrovich Romanoff and Duchess Maria Illarionovna Vorontsova-Dashkova. He was the grandson of the Grand Duchess Xenia Aleksandrovna and Grand Duke Alexander Mikhailovich and a great-grandson of Russian Tsar Alexander III.
His father, his grandmother Grand Duchess Xenia, and his great-grandmother Dowager Empress Maria Fedorovna escaped from Russia in 1919 along with a group of other family members, in a battleship dispatched to the Crimea by the British royal family.
Prince Nikita Nikitich completed an MA in Russian history at the University of California, Berkeley in 1956, and later taught history for a period of time at San Francisco State University. He co-authored a biography of Ivan the Terrible (Crowell, 1975) and co-translated a volume of writings by the modernist writer Vasilii Rozanov (Vasily Rozanov The Apocalypse of Our Time and Other Writings, Prager, 1976.). He was active as a philanthropist and served as the Vice-president of the Romanov Family Association, also travelling to Russia on a number of occasions as an informal cultural ambassador and representative of the Romanoff family. He died in 2007 after a stroke and a long illness.
Princess Janet Romanoff (nee Janet Schonwald) was born in Oklahoma in 1933, the daughter of Emanuel Schonwald and Ethel Diamond. She attended Barnard College, graduating with a degree in Russian, and then earned a PhD in Russian Literature at Stanford University in 1974.
While at Stanford, Princess Janet met Prince Nikita Romanoff, who at the time was a graduate student in Russian history at the University of California at Berkeley. They married in 1961 and had their only child, Theodore, in 1974. Princess Janet lived most of her married life in New York and was involved in Russian-related philanthropic activities, including the Russian Children's Welfare Society and the Russian Monuments and Culture Fund. Princess Janet and her husband also worked as informal cultural ambassadors to facilitate Russian and American relations, travelling several times to post-Soviet Russia.
After the death of her husband and son in 2007, Princess Janet moved to Alexandria, Egypt, where she was actively engaged in philanthropy, with a particular interest in supporting the education of Egyptian women. She passed away in 2017.
Prince Theodore Nikitich Romanoff (1974-2007) was the only son of Princess Janet and Prince Nikita Romanoff. He studied classics and Egyptian and ancient languages at Columbia and Brown University, receiving an MA in Archaeology from Brown. He passed away in 2007, shortly after his father’s death. An annual research fellowship in his honor is offered by the American Research Center in Egypt. The Theodore N. Romanoff Professorship in Russian Studies at the University of Oklahoma is endowed in his name as part of the Romanoff bequest.
Janet and Nikita Romanoff
Nikita and Theordore at Christmas
