Russian Orthodox Confessors

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Russia rehabilitates last tsar

Vladimir Putin stands besides a portrait of a Russian Tsar during a visit to Vladivostok in September 2008

Russian Orthodox faithful hold icons and flags as they mark the 90th anniversary of the slaying of Tsar Nicholas II

Tsar Nicolas II with his wfe and five children, who were all killed by the Bolsheviks in July 1918

The skull of a Romanov family member undergoes tests in 2007

MOSCOW (AFP) — Russia's Supreme Court on Wednesday formally rehabilitated the country's last tsar, Nicholas II, declaring that he and his family were unlawfully killed by Soviet authorities.

The ruling negates the Romanov's culpability in crimes the Bolsheviks used to justify the 1917 revolution and the slaying of the tsar and his royal family the following year.

"The presidium declared as groundless the repression of Tsar Nicholas II and his family and rehabilitated them," said Supreme Court spokesman Pavel Odintsov.

The decision overturns a ruling by the same court in November 2007 that the killings did not qualify as political repression, but premeditated murder.

It was welcomed by the Russian Orthodox Church and descendants of Nicholas II including Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who spearheaded the campaign to rehabilitate the imperial Romanov family.

"The grand duchess expressed her joy and satisfaction after the decision," her spokesman Alexander Zakatov told AFP, adding the decision "proves the rule of law in Russia."

Her lawyer, German Lukyanov, described it as "a final decision that cannot be challenged," adding the duchess did not intend to claim any royal property seized by the Bolsheviks.

Other Romanovs have been rehabilitated as victims of Soviet political repression, but a similar measure was refused in February for the last tsar and his immediate family, whose remains are buried in Saint Petersburg.

A spokesman for the Orthodox Church said the "decision can only be welcomed," in a statement reported by Interfax news agency.

"It strengthens the rule of law, restores historical continuity and 1,000 years of state tradition," the spokesman Georgy Ryabykh was quoted as saying.

Another branch of the Romanov's descendants also praised the ruling.

"The fact that the Russian state took responsibility for that murder is a step towards repentance ... and the rehabilitation of all innocent (Bolshevik) victims," said their spokesman Ivan Artsishevsky.

Tsar Nicholas II, his German-born wife Alexandra and their five children were shot by Bolshevik police in the cellars of a house in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg, where they were being held prisoner, on July 17, 1918, eight months after the Russian revolution.

The fate of the tsar and his family has been a political football in Russia since their remains were found in a forest near Yekaterinburg in the closing years of the Soviet Union in the early 1990s.

They were canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church as martyrs in 2000 despite abundant evidence that "bloody Nicholas," as the Bolsheviks branded him, had been a leading contributor to the misfortunes that befell the country.

In late 2002, the duchess appealed to a Kremlin commission under President Vladimir Putin to rehabilitate and declare null and void the "crimes" of Romanovs.

Putin's successor, Dmitry Medvedev, who became Russia's youngest leader since Nicholas II when inaugurated as president in May at the age of 42, is reported to be something of an admirer of the late tsar.

The Russian authorities have played along with moves to rehabilitate the Romanovs perhaps, observers believe, because the memory of their execution serves to tarnish the reputation of the Communist Party, still the leading opposition group in Russian politics.

The rehabilitation was later denounced by Communists, who said it was "cynical" but would "sooner or later be corrected."

"It was not the Bolsheviks" who took out the tsar, but "all the working people," said Communist Party deputy leader Ivan Melnikov.

The anniversary of the tsar's execution has become the occasion for religious processions throughout Russia.

This year on July 17, hundreds of monarchists turned out in Moscow to commemorate the 90th anniversary of the slaying of Nicholas II and his family.

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Voices of faith - Nathalie Dale's journal tells of her remarkable past

Posted by By Bruce Shields The Ann Arbor News September 21, 2008 07:00AM

Nathalie Dale lives in a modest house just outside of Ann Arbor.

She is retired and lives without pretense, but a dusty journal article written in French resting in her living room bookcase reveals her true heritage.

Dale's family was part of the Russian aristocracy. Her grandfather, a historian by trade, was a member of the court of Czar Nicholas II, the last czar of Russia. Along with her father, who was a volunteer in the White Army fighting the communists, Dale's grandfather fled the Bolshevik revolution in 1919.
Nathalie Dale listens to the service at St. Vladimir Orthodox Church in Ann Arbor.

Dale was born in Athens and was baptized in an Orthodox church that traces its history back a thousand years. Her family lived there happily until the end of World War II. Another war, another attempted communist takeover, forced the family out of Greece. Dale remembers troops shooting at the train and bombs falling during the 22-day train ride to Austria.

The family settled in the British-controlled sector of Austria in a village with other Russian refugees. One of the main forms of recreation available to Dale, then a teenager, were twice-weekly dances. It was there she met her future husband, a young British soldier named John Dale.

In 1949, the couple moved to America and settled near Dexter. John Dale became a banker and Nathalie attended the University of Michigan, eventually earning a master's degree in music.
When St. Vladimir Orthodox Church opened in 1981, Nathalie Dale became one of the original parishioners. She has attended nearly every Sunday service since.

Questions and answers with Nathalie Dale:

What is your religion?
Russian Orthodox.

Were your parents of this faith?
Yes, they were.

What is the one idea from your faith that is the most powerful or important to you?
I think my faith ... speaks very much to the heart. It has a certain warmth to it and I feel during the service, if you open up your heart, there's a mystery ... that speaks to you and sort of lifts you up from the ordinary world.

How is your faith important in your daily life?
Certain prayers really are part of me, and when I say them I'm really transported. I feel the strength coming from this.

How is your faith important in the wider world?
In Russia right now, there's a big resurgence of the faith, and I think that's wonderful because it was practically eliminated during communist times. Thousands of priests had been killed, also thousands of churches had been destroyed. It's a very old faith, and they haven't changed it. It is, I think, just about the way it was almost a thousand years ago.

Describe one experience where your faith has helped you through a tough time.
I don't know about one experience; I think there were many experiences. If I really concentrate and pray, it really makes a big difference. It strengthens me. It changes my outlook.

Voices of Faith: Nathalie Dale

Voices of Faith: Nathalie Dale

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Last Russian Tsar’s Shirt Tested for Blood Traces

By Irina Titova
Staff Writer

Genetic experts and investigators from the General Prosecutors office arrived in St. Petersburg on Wednesday to begin analysis of blood traces on a shirt that belonged to the last Russian tsar, Nicholas II, to assist in the definitive identification of remains believed to be those of the monarch, who was murdered in 1918. The shirt is kept at the State Hermitage Museum.

The remains were found near the city of Yekaterinburg in 1991. An investigation concluded that the remains were those of the tsar and his family and were buried, with full honors, in 1998. However, with scientific advances, a greater degree of certainty in the identification is now possible.

“We are not planning to take the shirt from the Hermitage. We’ll do all the necessary work right at the museum,” said Vladimir Solovyov, investigator of high priority at the Russian General Prosecutor’s Office, who is taking part in the analysis, Interfax reported.

Solovyov said they will soak the samples of the tsar’s blood in distilled water.

The blood dates from 1891 when Nicholas, then-heir to the throne, was attacked with a sword by a policeman in Japan in an unsuccessful assassination attempt.

The experts plan to compare the DNA of bone remains found in 1991, and stored, to that obtained from the blood.

However, Nikolai Nevolin, head of Sverdlovsk Oblast Court and Medical Expertise Bureau, said old blood spots are hard to extract, and that experts can obtain results only if the blood spots have been severely contaminated, the Novy Rayon news agency reported.

In July the investigators into the murder of the tsar and his family announced that exhaustive testing had established that remains discovered near Yekaterinburg were those of the last two children to be identified: Tsarevich Alexei and his sister Maria. The research is to be completed by the end of the summer.

The experts hope that the blood from the tsar’s shirt will help to not only identify the tsar’s remains but also help to confirm the identity of the remains believed to be those of Alexei and Maria, Novy Rayon reported.

The Russian Orthodox Church and some of the Romanovs’ descendants have raised doubts that the remains so far discovered and buried are those of the royal family.

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Shadows cast on the renaissance of Russia's last czar

Czar Nicholas II, seated third from left, and his wife Alexandra, center rear, pose with their family. (Associated Press)

JANE ARMSTRONG
From Monday's Globe and Mail
July 27, 2008 at 9:42 PM EDT

MOSCOW — In the basement of Moscow's most iconic church, levelled to dust by the Soviets and later rebuilt after communism collapsed, a new exhibit about the doomed Romanov family is drawing crowds.

“I want to know everything about them,” said 17-year-old Praskophya Chekmaryova, staring intently at a framed snapshot of the photogenic Romanov royal family during a seaside vacation. “I didn't have a lot of information so I decided to come here.”

This rosy portrayal of the Romanov family has prompted observations that Russia, particularly the Orthodox Church, has begun to deify the fallen czar, methodically airbrushing his faults from the public record just as aggressively as the Soviets demonized him.

Like the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour, the refurbished church in which the popular exhibit now sits, the Romanov family reputation has been fully restored since the collapse of the Soviet Union 17 years ago.

But some say that this rehabilitation has drifted too far and that Russians are wrongly lionizing their former monarch, who abdicated in 1917 on the eve of the Bolshevik revolution. A year later, Nicholas and Alexandra and their five children were executed by firing squad in a Yekaterinburg cellar on the orders of Vladimir Lenin.

Ninety years later, with the backing of the Russian Orthodox Church, which canonized the entire family in 2000, many Russians now view the czar as a martyred hero and great statesman.
In fact, Nicholas is now running neck and neck with Josef Stalin in popularity in a television program that is running a contest to judge Russia's greatest historical figures.

Some historians say the Orthodox Church is the driving force behind attempts to withhold negative publicity about the Romanovs.

Archivist Elena Chirkova, who helped with the current exhibit, said two photographs of the royal family pictured with Rasputin were ordered removed from the exhibit by church officials.

Ms. Chirkova said she believes church attempts to idealize the family are a mistake, every bit as misplaced as the Soviet efforts to denigrate them. She thinks the czar was just an ordinary man who made mistakes in office, but loved his wife and children.

“During Soviet times, they were depicted as bad people. For 70 years, that's what people were taught. Now it's the opposite – they are idealized. The truth, I think, is somewhere in the middle. They were human beings.”

Previous exhibits in the 1990s, she said, provided more complete versions of the lives of Nicholas and Alexandra.

The current exhibit, entitled Crown of the Czar, is sponsored by the Orthodox Church's Yekaterinburg diocese, the Russian Archives and the Moscow Museum.

A spokesman for the Yekaterinburg diocese confirmed that the church nixed the Rasputin photos, but denied that it was censoring negative images from the exhibit.

In a telephone interview, Father Maxim said the photos were removed because they didn't fit the theme of the exhibit, which was to show the czar's political, social and military activities.

However, the priest stressed that he does not believe Nicholas II had any significant weaknesses and was a true “hero of Russia.” In the future, he said, the church will seek to further elevate the czar's status and accomplishments in office.

“He was a great emperor and he did a lot of good things for Russia,” Father Maxim said in a telephone interview from Yekaterinburg.

Despite the spat about the exclusion of some photos, the Russian appetite for all things Romanov is large. Nearly 40,000 people have visited the exhibit, which features some never-before-seen documents and artifacts, including the bayonets that were used to kill some family members and the yellowed telegrams from the Soviet executioners, ordering litres of acid, which they doused over the bodies before burying them.

There are also documents detailing a peace conference in The Hague which the czar initiated in 1899.

Earlier this month, thousands of pilgrims flocked to Yekaterinburg, the Urals city about 1,300 kilometres east of Moscow, to mark the 90th anniversary of the family's death. Interest in the royals was also buoyed by the recent discovery of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria. Their parents and siblings' remains were discovered in a mass grave outside the city in 1991. Last summer, an amateur historian discovered the second gravesite and subsequent DNA tests have confirmed their identities.

Since their deaths in 1918, the lives and deaths of Russia's Romanov family have inspired books, films and pretenders to the throne the world over. The most infamous was a claim from a Polish peasant, Anna Anderson, who said she was the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the czar's youngest daughter. DNA tests after her death discredited her claims.

The official Soviet narrative, taught to schoolchildren, was that Nicholas II was a weak and violent ruler who destroyed Russia and deserved to die.

Western historians were kinder, although the consensus was that he was a naive leader, ill-equipped to steer a massive empire on the verge of a Bolshevik revolution.

Some older visitors to the Moscow exhibit seemed overwhelmed by the discrepancy between the czar's current reputation and the version that was drummed into them during the Soviet era.
“We were taught that all of them were enemies of the people,” said visitor Galina Glabokova, 52. “What we were told wasn't true. It was a tragedy. Our new society began with the blood of this family.”

Liudmila Mukhamedova, a curator with the Moscow Museum, went further. She described the doomed czar as a visionary leader who faced his death with “Christian humility.”

“He thought about his family, which he adored,” she said. “But I think he thought more about Russia's future. He was ready to sacrifice himself for his country.”

Her introduction to the lives of Russia's last imperial family may have been less complete than she knew. Absent from this exhibit are any traces of Czar Nicholas II's well-documented human foibles, including the family's infamous association with the manipulative mystic Rasputin, as well as his wife Alexandra's fondness for expensive jewels.

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