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June 18, 1998
Russia's 'A List' Begs Off Attending Czar's Funeral
Related Article
Russia to Bury Last Czar in St. Petersburg (Feb. 28)
By CELESTINE BOHLEN
OSCOW -- The burial of the often-disturbed remains of Nicholas II, Russia's last Czar, and his family next month was planned as an occasion rich in pomp and symbolism, complete with honor guards, a solemn procession through the streets of the old imperial capital of St. Petersburg and a 19-volley salute.
But with the recent announcements that neither the head of the Russian Orthodox Church nor President Boris N. Yeltsin nor representatives of Russia's old nobility, including members of the Czar's own Romanov family, will attend, Russia's last royal burial has been downgraded from an event of state to an unusually elaborate church service.
The burial is to be held 80 years after the Czar and his family were executed in a basement in the city of Yekaterinburg.
As the bottom falls out of the guest list, preparations for the ceremony have been quietly scaled back. "It will be modest, without pomposity, without excessive spending," said Deputy Prime Minister Boris Y. Nemtsov, who is charged with organizing the event.
He added that it was Russia's "historic duty and human responsibility" to put the royal family's remains to rest.
Instead of a hoped-for moment of national reconciliation, the burial has reopened two of the most delicate debates that have swirled around Nicholas II -- the authenticity of the bones unearthed outside Yekaterinburg and the Czar's proper place in history.
He is venerated by some Russians as a martyr, derided by others as a weakling and a despot, but seen by most as a victim of one of the Russian Revolution's most cold-blooded crimes.
The Czar, his wife, Alexandra, their five children and four family attendants were banished to the city of Yekaterinburg as Russia was swept by civil war. On July 17, 1918, they were herded into a cellar room by their Bolshevik captors and killed in fusillade of bullets and stabs of bayonets. The Czar had been forced to abdicate in March 1917.
Bones found at the bottom of a pit outside Yekaterinburg in 1979 were kept secret until 1991, when Russians were finally allowed to explore the violent history of the Bolshevik Revolution.
Since then, the remains of Russia's royal family have been in restless limbo, submitted to a series of scientifically conclusive forensic tests that have still failed to produce unanimity on their identity, and battled over by regions competing for the honor of their burial place.
Ostensibly, it was the issue of the disputed bones that drove the Russian Orthodox Church to announce last week that Aleksy II, Patriarch of Moscow and All Russia, would not attend the ceremonies, citing a "split in the church and secular society" over the authenticity of the remains. The church's Holy Synod called the split "obviously confrontational and painful."
The burial service (funeral services for the Czar and his family were held in Russia soon after their death in 1918) will be officiated by a local priest on July 17 at the Romanov family vault inside the Petropavlovsk Fortress, while Aleksy II will lead the faithful in prayers on that day for "all those killed at the time of severe persecution."
No sooner did the church make its announcement than others who had been invited began to decline, in rapid succession. Speaking at a conference of nobility clubs that opened with the singing of the old Russian imperial anthem "God Save the Czar," Andrei Golitsyn, head of the Russian Noble Assembly, announced that its members, too, would stay away.
Like the church, he said, the assembly believes that a Government commission established to examine the authenticity of the bones had "overlooked a number of questions that arouse doubts and explanations contradicting the official one."
Some Romanovs will attend the ceremonies, but Grand Duchess Maria, the head of the house, has said she will make a final decision at the end of this month.
By Tuesday, Yeltsin confirmed that he would not attend, a decision seen as heavily influenced by the church. "Let's put it this way," said Viktor Aksyuchits, an aide to Nemtsov. "Yeltsin is not coming because the Patriarch will not be there. The level of representation has definitely been lowered."
Aksyuchits said the church's real motives in keeping its distance from the burial had more to do with a division among its members, some of whom support a proposal to canonize Nicholas in the year 2000.
"For them, it would be more convenient to have the burial after canonization," he said. "That is why they want to drag it out.
"We consider that that doubts about the authenticity will only redouble as long as there is no burial. The debates will always be there."
After six years of research, including a DNA analysis done by the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington and forensic work done in Russia and Britain, a Russian Government commission concluded in January that the skeletal remains were those of Nicholas, Alexandra, three of their five children and four family attendants.
These findings confirmed a long-secret report by the Czar's chief executioner that two of the bodies taken from the Yekaterinburg cellar had been burned, and the rest buried. The missing bodies belong to the Romanov heir, Alexei, who was 13 when he was killed, and one of his sisters, either Maria, then 19, or her 17-year-old sister Anastasia, a romantic figure who keeps returning as a popular Hollywood legend.
But critics of the commission complain that it cloaked its work in secrecy, which only led to new theories about the fate of the Czar's family. Some far-right Russian nationalists contend that the Czar was a victim of a conspiracy of Jews and Masons, while others steadfastly refuse to believe any evidence that was collected during the Soviet era.
The proposal to canonize Nicholas II has powerful supporters within the Russian Orthodox Church, which would be following the example set by the émigré-founded Russian Church Abroad, which has venerated Nicholas II and other members of the Romanov family, along with tens of thousands of other victims of the Russian Revolution, as martyrs for their faith since 1981.
"The possibility of canonization is the reason why the church is dealing with the issue of authenticity very attentively," said the Rev. Vsevolod Chaplin, secretary for church and society at the Moscow Patriarchate. "If someone is canonized, then their remains are venerated as relics. And there can be no doubt about the authenticity of a holy relic."
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