Orthodox faithful and surviving royals are expected to flock this week to commemorate the last czar, Nicholas II, and his family, whose slaying 90 years ago still touches a nerve in post-Soviet Russia.
Beginning yesterday, the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains was to echo with the sound of choirs, bell-ringing and prayers as the faithful recall the murders that sealed the fall of a centuries-old dynasty and its replacement by the Soviet Union.
Church officials said ceremonies would culminate on Thursday at the spot where on July 17, 1918, Bolshevik agents shot Nicholas, his wife, their five children, three servants and a doctor.
“If in the past, and in the Soviet period especially, people voiced pride that here, in Yekaterinburg, we killed the czar, now it’s the opposite,” Archbishop Vikenty of Yekaterinburg told a local newspaper last month, reflecting on changed attitudes and the Church’s revived role.
“People realize it was a tragedy,” he told the newspaper, Yekaterinburgskaya Initsiativa.
A church on the site of the “special purpose house,” as it was called by the Bolsheviks, provides the backdrop for this week’s commemorations. The original building was pulled down in 1977 by local party boss Boris Yeltsin, later Russia’s first post-Soviet leader.
After an all-night vigil, pilgrims will process 18km to a disused mine where the bodies were first dumped, before they were later retrieved, doused in acid and reburied at another site for more effective concealment.
More commemorations take place the next night in the town of Alapayevsk, 150km to the north, on the anniversary of the killing there of six more royals and their servants.
Joining the commemorations will be a Romanov descendant, Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who lives in Madrid and claims to be Nicholas’ rightful heir.
Reflecting continued sensitivities, she lodged two new court appeals last week in a long-running battle to get formal state recognition that her ancestors were victims of political repression and not of a random attack.
The refusal to “rehabilitate” the Romanovs suggests “some political forces want to maintain elements of the Communist regime, the worst elements,” said Alexander Zakatov, an aide to Maria Vladimirovna, insisting that expressions of regret by post-Soviet leaders such as Yeltsin were not enough.
Meanwhile another branch of the family, the Romanov Family Association, said on its Web site it would mark the anniversary not in Yekaterinburg but in Saint Petersburg.
The choice reflects split opinion over the reburial 10 years ago in Saint Petersburg of remains dug up in 1991 and thought to be of Nicholas, his wife, three of the children and the royal servants and doctor.
While DNA tests confirmed their authenticity, both the Orthodox Church and Maria Vladimirovna refused to accept the evidence as foolproof, amid doubts over which of the five children were dug up and whether one, Anastasiya, might have survived.
Russian officials now claim all doubts have been settled after the discovery last summer of two more sets of remains, said after testing to be irrefutably those of Nicholas’ son and heir Alexei and daughter Maria.
‘IN A DIFFERENT PLACE’: The envoy first visited Shanghai, where he attended a Chinese basketball playoff match, and is to meet top officials in Beijing tomorrow US Secretary of State Antony Blinken yesterday arrived in China on his second visit in a year as the US ramps up pressure on its rival over its support for Russia while also seeking to manage tensions with Beijing. The US diplomat tomorrow is to meet China’s top brass in Beijing, where he is also expected to plead for restraint as Taiwan inaugurates president-elect William Lai (賴清德), and to raise US concerns on Chinese trade practices. However, Blinken is also seeking to stabilize ties, with tensions between the world’s two largest economies easing since his previous visit in June last year. At the
UNSETTLING IMAGES: The scene took place in front of TV crews covering the Trump trial, with a CNN anchor calling it an ‘emotional and unbelievably disturbing moment’ A man who doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire outside the courthouse where former US president Donald Trump is on trial has died, police said yesterday. The New York City Police Department (NYPD) said the man was declared dead by staff at an area hospital. The man was in Collect Pond Park at about 1:30pm on Friday when he took out pamphlets espousing conspiracy theories, tossed them around, then doused himself in an accelerant and set himself on fire, officials and witnesses said. A large number of police officers were nearby when it happened. Some officers and bystanders rushed
Beijing is continuing to commit genocide and crimes against humanity against Uyghurs and other Muslim minorities in its western Xinjiang province, U.S. Secretary of State Antony Blinken said in a report published on Monday, ahead of his planned visit to China this week. The State Department’s annual human rights report, which documents abuses recorded all over the world during the previous calendar year, repeated language from previous years on the treatment of Muslims in Xinjiang, but the publication raises the issue ahead of delicate talks, including on the war in Ukraine and global trade, between the top U.S. diplomat and Chinese
RIVER TRAGEDY: Local fishers and residents helped rescue people after the vessel capsized, while motorbike taxis evacuated some of the injured At least 58 people going to a funeral died after their overloaded river boat capsized in the Central African Republic’s (CAR) capital, Bangui, the head of civil protection said on Saturday. “We were able to extract 58 lifeless bodies,” Thomas Djimasse told Radio Guira. “We don’t know the total number of people who are underwater. According to witnesses and videos on social media, the wooden boat was carrying more than 300 people — some standing and others perched on wooden structures — when it sank on the Mpoko River on Friday. The vessel was heading to the funeral of a village chief in