Saturday, October 18, 2025 The Russian History Museum connected to Holy Trinity Orthodox Monastery and Seminary in Herkimer County, Upstate New York (jordanville.org) hosted a virtual lecture, open to the public, titled “Mysterious Palaces & Forged Masterpieces.” It is an apt theme for a museum endowed in perpetuity by a woman who is simultaneously thought to have been a “fraud” or, more plausibly, a real grand duchess, HIH Anastasia Nicholaevna Romanov, Grand Duchess of Russia.
While the director of a Rhode Island based not for profit, St. Nicholas House Foundation, alias “Evgenia Smetisko” was reported to be responsible for over 50 million dollars of assets, but whence would such treasure have originated?
While that question is open to speculation and analysis, Smetisko/Romanov was generous in her death to have left many Romanov/ Russian Empire era objets d’art and invaluable collectibles to the museum, a project she had envisioned even in her memoirs published in the 1960s. The public is invited to read about her legacy in GRAND DUCHESS ANASTASIA: STILL A MYSTERY? (Histriabooks.com/product/grand-duchess-anastasia
The lecture at the museum kept its promise to be eye-opening and is scheduled to be available thereafter on YouTube at the museum’s channel: https://www.youtube.com/@RussianHistoryMuseum
