Execution details: who died how, in what order, etc. GRAPHIC

[Превед]

And to be clear , I find killing as punishment for ANY crime to be totally unacceptable

Agreed. Penal labour is one of the best legacies of Tsarism (less so the form practized in the Soviet Union), which we should apply to our modern societies instead of the death penalty or Scandinavian-style luxury short-term sentences.

[NicolasG]

If there were "enemies of the people" in Russia in 1918, they were the band of revolutionaries that reached power after a coup in November 1917 and imposed terror, war, famine, misery and religious persecution on the Russian people.

And nearly a century later, the shadow of Lenin and his thugs still hangs over Russia.  

Don't ignore the horrors and iniquities of Tsarism just because what followed happened to be a lot worse. Absolute monarchy / dictatorship ;  both are as abhorrent now as they were then . Terror , war , misery and religious persecution were part of Nicholas II's reign too (see article below for instance) . Russians didn't revolt twice under his rule for a lark.

 I understand the fall and demise of the last ruling family fascinates many with its high drama and tragic ending (me too) but I cannot allow sentiment to cloud my judgement or political principles. As such , the gloss quickly wears off Nicky and Alix and the system they propped up for 23 years.

 And to be clear , I find killing as punishment for ANY crime to be totally unacceptable (unlike Nicholas) and I deplore his and his familys murder . My heart goes out to their children , less so to Nicholas and Alix , who bear some responsibility for Russia's fall into the abyss  , and whom I find to be deeply troubling , unsympathetic characters . Nevertheless , their end was unwarranted.

http://www.kingandwilson.com/AtlantisArticles/Inheritance.htm

Is the article by King and Wilson considered "serious scholarship" in the US?

"The Union of the Russian People was founded in 1905 by Dr. Alexander Dubrovin, a St. Petersburg physician described by one contemporary as a "coarse, repulsive animal" and a "vile parasite"

"These ominous signs led Plehve to openly support provoking the Russo-Japanese War-"a small, victorious war to stem the tide of Revolution," as he famously put it." No, he didn't. It was his enemy Witte who atributed the quote to Plehve.

"And so, Nicholas appointed the experienced, "honest" Plehve, the same man who, within a year, planned and watched with delight as the pogrom in Kishinev erupted under his direction."

"All Jews," he (Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich) publicly declared at one gathering, "ought to be crucified." Source: a book of political propaganda published in 1905 (the very same year when Grand Duke Sergei was murdered) by an author who also wrote the prologue to a book called "Erinnerungen eines Nihilisten" (Reminiscences of a Nihilist) in 1906. Credibility: 0%.

The article cannot be taken seriously.

Let's use our heads. Why would the rulers of an autocratic system who wanted above all order and stability plan, endorse or promote bouts of anarchistic violence? I have already said it and I repeat it again. Nicholas II NEVER promoted or endorsed any pogrom. He even forbade the public performance of a play on Christ's Passion by Kostantin Romanov because he thought that it might provoke violence against the Jews.

The Jews suffered discrimation in the Russian Empire. True. We can call the Russian Empire "anti-semitic", but then, in order to be fair, we would also have to call the United States of America of late XIX century- early XX century "anti-Native American", "anti-Black", "anti-Mexican", "anti-Philipphine"..., the British Empire "anti-Irish", "anti-Indian", "anti-Catholic" (A Catholic cannot be King of England, even today), the French Republic "anti-Berber", "anti-African", "anti-Vietnamese"....

And the fate of the Jews was not so dark as Mr. Wilson wants us to believe. Trotsky's father, for example, was a rich farmer (in fact, one of the richest people many miles around) in the Kherson governorate, on farm land (some of the best in the Russian Empire) that the Tsar (Nicholas I or Alexander II, I don't remember it) had granted to Jewish settlers.

On the other hand, it's also true that Jews were over represented in the revolutionary movement. At the beginning of the XX century the terrorist branch of the Socialist Revolutionaries was headed by Yevno Azef, a Jew who organized the assesination of Plehve (Minister of Interior) and Grand Duke Sergei Alexandrovich (Nicholas II's uncle). The assesination of Prime Minister Stolypin was commited also by a Jew, Dmitry Bogrov. Plehve "claimed that fully 40 percent of the revolutionaries were Jews" (Richard Pipes, The Russian Revolution), and this was not only the product of the prejudices or fantasy of an anti-semite. "As he (Lenin) remarked to his sister Anna, Jewish activists constituted about half the number of revolutionaries in the southern regions of the Russian Empire" (Robert Service, Lenin)

It was a Teufelskreis, a vicious circle: many Jews became attracted to revolutionary groups because of the discriminatory laws against them and the (very real) abundance of Jewish revolutionaries made much more difficult to abolish those laws, as it was feared that the army, the administration, the universities could become tainted by the revolution.  

[Lochlanach]

The last Tsars personal views on Jews and their persecution  are on record , like them or not - as is the institutional and societal anti-semitism of Russia during his reign . You are all too fond of dismissing evidence that casts him in a negative light  , yet seize upon evidence that reflects well on him , and use those as gospel truth.

 But using a couple of well known interventions he made on behalf of Jews as  'gotcha' pieces of evidence , as well as downplaying the violence by suggesting that things weren't that bad - look at Trotsky's dad , he had a farm  - will never be enough to erase this odious aspect of his character and rule , and it's in poor taste to make such arguments . Cherry picking a few quotes you dislike ,or dismiss entirely, from a lengthy non-academic , yet source filled , article - won't do it either.
To ignore or minimize the unsavoury and calamitous aspects of his  reign (of which there are many)  , and maybe even absolve him of culpability (autocracy without responsibility) ...makes little sense to me , possibly because I support nothing he represented.

Yes I would class all of those empires and nations as having strong racist overtones at the time. And I detest imperialism in all its guises past and present.

'Why would an autocratic system that wanted stability.... endorse or promote anarchic acts of violence ?'  What did it matter to the Tsar  if the victims were Jews or other perceived ' enemies' of his rule? And why even allow the Black Hundreds , the Union, etc to exist at all in that case?

[NicolasG]

The last Tsars personal views on Jews and their persecution  are on record , like them or not - as is the institutional and societal anti-semitism of Russia during his reign . You are all too fond of dismissing evidence that casts him in a negative light  , yet seize upon evidence that reflects well on him , and use those as gospel truth.

 But using a couple of well known interventions he made on behalf of Jews as  'gotcha' pieces of evidence , as well as downplaying the violence by suggesting that things weren't that bad - look at Trotsky's dad , he had a farm  - will never be enough to erase this odious aspect of his character and rule , and it's in poor taste to make such arguments . Cherry picking a few quotes you dislike ,or dismiss entirely, from a lengthy non-academic , yet source filled , article - won't do it either.
To ignore or minimize the unsavoury and calamitous aspects of his  reign (of which there are many)  , and maybe even absolve him of culpability (autocracy without responsibility) ...makes little sense to me , possibly because I support nothing he represented.

Yes I would class all of those empires and nations as having strong racist overtones at the time. And I detest imperialism in all its guises past and present.

'Why would an autocratic system that wanted stability.... endorse or promote anarchic acts of violence ?'  What did it matter to the Tsar  if the victims were Jews or other perceived ' enemies' of his rule? And why even allow the Black Hundreds , the Union, etc to exist at all in that case?

It is funny that you accuse me of "cherry picking" when the article by King and Wilson you posted a link to is a complete exercise in cherry picking. If Nicholas II expresses his dislike of a man he has met and the man happens to be Jewish (although Nicholas II does not mention it or makes any reference to his ethnicity), that means that he hates Jews. If a man who wrote a prologue to a book written by a revolutionary claims in another book that Grand Duke Sergei said that all Jews should be crucified, we should believe him, even if Grand Duke Sergei was already dead when the book was published and could not complain.

The article by King is non-academic. That is not a problem: most of the books I read are non-academic. The problem is that the article is rubbish.

The wealth of Trotsky's father is not just some anedoctic remark. I don't think that saying that thousands of Jews were granted in exceptionally favourable conditions good farmland to settle is a "bad taste argument". Specially if we take into account that at that time millions of Russian were serfs or former serfs freed with a minimum allotment of land and you are trying to prove that the Tsarist regime hated Jews and wanted to exterminate them. I would say it is quite relevant to the topic.

Why did "Black Hundred" exist in the Russian Empire?

First of all, because the "Black Hundred" were not a political party, with a program, offices, membership, etc... That was the pejorative name applied by revolutionaries to a myriad of groups who supported the Tsarist regime and opposed them. If a mob stormed shops owned by Jews and beat or killed Jews, they were not acting following the orders of some "Black Hundred movement" with offices in Tverskaya.

And in the Russian Empire Social Democrats (Lenin's party) were allowed to exist. And Socialist Revolutionaries, who approved the use of terrorism. They had newspapers, they took part in elections after 1905. And Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), who had called for a total boycott of the tsarist regime after the first Duma was dissolved. And Guchkov, the leader of the Octobrist Party, a man who Nicholas II detested because he had published Empress Alexandra's letters to Rasputin (which he got through monk Iliodor, a former associate of Rasputin turned into blackmailer), was a member of the Tsarist Duma instead of a prisoner in a tsarist prison.

The fact is that the Tsarist regime was not the police-state, repressive, tyranic regime that many, including Lochlanach, depict. That came later, with the bolsheviks. In fact the Russian Empire was a quite weak state.

"The Bolsheviks attacked the Russian state not because it was oppresive, but because it was weak. The Russia of 1908 did nearly as much for its citizens as the states of western Europe did for theirs. Trial by jury, equality before the law, enlightened treatment of ethic minorities, religious tolerance, cheap credits for farmers, an efficient postal and railway service, a free press, flourishing universities with leading scientists, doctor and scholars, universal (if impoverished) primary education and primary medical care, the most powerful outburst of creativity in all the arts that Europe had known since the Italian Renaissance - all this outweighted for many observers the endemic alcoholism and syphilis, the idleness and bribery, the foul roads, the idle bureaucrats, the general poverty. Russia's ills seemed curable by economic progress."

Donald Rayfield, Stalin and his hangmen, Penguin Books, 2005, p. 33.

 

[Lochlanach]

To get back to the subject title and to clear it up for myself; I believe it went Nicholas, Alexandra, Trupp, Botkin, Anna (?), Olga/Tatiana, Tatiana/Olga, Alexei, Maria/Anastasia, Anastasia/Maria. (Too many sources say Olga or Tatiana died first out of the girls and Maria or Anastasia died last.)

Nicholas - Bullet wound(s) to the head/heart.

Alexandra - Bullet to the side of the head.

Anna - Bayoneted to death.

Olga - Gunshot wound to the head by either falling back or by Yurovsky when she tried to stand up. (I believe we all agree she definitely died from a bullet to the head).

Tatiana - Gunshot wound to the head by Yurovsky, bayoneted to death trying to protect Anastasia and Maria (some sources say that, don't they?) or rifle butt if you believe she was one of the girls who cried out when carried out.

Maria - Gunshot wound to the head (if you believe the body found in the 1991 burial is not Maria), or rifle butt if you believe she was one of the girls who cried out.

Anastasia - Gunshot wound to the head (if you believe the body found in the 1991 burial is not Anastasia), or rifle butt if you believe she was one of the girls who cried out.

Alexei - Gunshot wound to the head.

I do not remember hearing how Trupp and Botkin died but I do believe someone wrote somewhere Botkin survived the first round of the bullets but Trupp did not.

There was another servant with them but I cannot recall his name at this moment of time. If you think I've made some mistakes please tell me.

Indeed , back to the thread. Everyone has their own theory as to who is who in the two grave sites and some may dispute the details of their deaths . My own interpretation is below, based on accounts of the murders and the skeletal remains  (if some don't like reading the details of the killings then don't continue to read the post - it is for GDSophie) ;

In order ;

Nicholas - shot in chest , died instantly , (NOT in head ), and bayonetted after death .
Alix - shot in head , probably died instantly , bayonetted after death.
Trupp and Kharitonov also died in this first volley of shots ; Botkin was shot but not fatally ; Maria apparently shot in the leg , as was Demidova.

2nd round of shots /general mayhem

Botkin - already seriously injured , shot dead
Alexei - finally shot in head at close range , after being shot and bayonetted  ;   his remains are fragmentary , and as far as I know, one cannot determine cause of death from them.
Olga - shot in head and probably died instantly.
Tatiana - shot in head and probably died instantly ; probably not bayonetted ; probably in the main grave .
Maria - already injured , bayonetted , NOT shot in head ; probably finally killed by rifle butts to the head en route to to the truck in the courtyard ; probably in the main grave.
Anastasia -  bayonetted , maybe shot in head (non fatally) , probably finally killed by rifle butts to the head en route to the truck  ; probably not in the main grave ; her remains are fragmentary , and as far as I know , one cannot determine the cause of death from them.
Demidova - bayonetted , and assumed by the killers to be the final one to die , until the two youngest girls  seemingly showed signs of life as they were moved to the truck .

All faces were destroyed by rifle butts at burial site and bodies doused in acid ; two bodies , Alexei and either Anastasia (I believe) or Maria - were partially burnt and buried separately.

The Fate of the Romanovs  by Greg King and Penny Wilson , has the most complete account of the murders .

[Lochlanach]

The last Tsars personal views on Jews and their persecution  are on record , like them or not - as is the institutional and societal anti-semitism of Russia during his reign . You are all too fond of dismissing evidence that casts him in a negative light  , yet seize upon evidence that reflects well on him , and use those as gospel truth.

 But using a couple of well known interventions he made on behalf of Jews as  'gotcha' pieces of evidence , as well as downplaying the violence by suggesting that things weren't that bad - look at Trotsky's dad , he had a farm  - will never be enough to erase this odious aspect of his character and rule , and it's in poor taste to make such arguments . Cherry picking a few quotes you dislike ,or dismiss entirely, from a lengthy non-academic , yet source filled , article - won't do it either.
To ignore or minimize the unsavoury and calamitous aspects of his  reign (of which there are many)  , and maybe even absolve him of culpability (autocracy without responsibility) ...makes little sense to me , possibly because I support nothing he represented.

Yes I would class all of those empires and nations as having strong racist overtones at the time. And I detest imperialism in all its guises past and present.

'Why would an autocratic system that wanted stability.... endorse or promote anarchic acts of violence ?'  What did it matter to the Tsar  if the victims were Jews or other perceived ' enemies' of his rule? And why even allow the Black Hundreds , the Union, etc to exist at all in that case?

It is funny that you accuse me of "cherry picking" when the article by King and Wilson you posted a link to is a complete exercise in cherry picking. If Nicholas II expresses his dislike of a man he has met and the man happens to be Jewish (although Nicholas II does not mention it or makes any reference to his ethnicity), that means that he hates Jews. If a man who wrote a prologue to a book written by a revolutionary claims in another book that Grand Duke Sergei said that all Jews should be crucified, we should believe him, even if Grand Duke Sergei was already dead when the book was published and could not complain.

The article by King is non-academic. That is not a problem: most of the books I read are non-academic. The problem is that the article is rubbish.

The wealth of Trotsky's father is not just some anedoctic remark. I don't think that saying that thousands of Jews were granted in exceptionally favourable conditions good farmland to settle is a "bad taste argument". Specially if we take into account that at that time millions of Russian were serfs or former serfs freed with a minimum allotment of land and you are trying to prove that the Tsarist regime hated Jews and wanted to exterminate them. I would say it is quite relevant to the topic.

Why did "Black Hundred" exist in the Russian Empire?

First of all, because the "Black Hundred" were not a political party, with a program, offices, membership, etc... That was the pejorative name applied by revolutionaries to a myriad of groups who supported the Tsarist regime and opposed them. If a mob stormed shops owned by Jews and beat or killed Jews, they were not acting following the orders of some "Black Hundred movement" with offices in Tverskaya.

And in the Russian Empire Social Democrats (Lenin's party) were allowed to exist. And Socialist Revolutionaries, who approved the use of terrorism. They had newspapers, they took part in elections after 1905. And Constitutional Democrats (Kadets), who had called for a total boycott of the tsarist regime after the first Duma was dissolved. And Guchkov, the leader of the Octobrist Party, a man who Nicholas II detested because he had published Empress Alexandra's letters to Rasputin (which he got through monk Iliodor, a former associate of Rasputin turned into blackmailer), was a member of the Tsarist Duma instead of a prisoner in a tsarist prison.

The fact is that the Tsarist regime was not the police-state, repressive, tyranic regime that many, including Lochlanach, depict. That came later, with the bolsheviks. In fact the Russian Empire was a quite weak state.

"The Bolsheviks attacked the Russian state not because it was oppresive, but because it was weak. The Russia of 1908 did nearly as much for its citizens as the states of western Europe did for theirs. Trial by jury, equality before the law, enlightened treatment of ethic minorities, religious tolerance, cheap credits for farmers, an efficient postal and railway service, a free press, flourishing universities with leading scientists, doctor and scholars, universal (if impoverished) primary education and primary medical care, the most powerful outburst of creativity in all the arts that Europe had known since the Italian Renaissance - all this outweighted for many observers the endemic alcoholism and syphilis, the idleness and bribery, the foul roads, the idle bureaucrats, the general poverty. Russia's ills seemed curable by economic progress."

Donald Rayfield, Stalin and his hangmen, Penguin Books, 2005, p. 33.

 

The article itself is of little importance . It is one article and it is hostile to the tsars - hence your disgust , and attempts to savage Greg King and Penny Wilson , two well respected Romanov experts. However , numerous  primary sources , letters , documents , diary entries, etc , ARE important . Nicholas condemns himself in the sources. Sorry if you disagree.

No I did not say extermination was on the Tsars mind, nor am I trying to prove so. Anti-semitic thoughts certainly were .

I questioned why , if Nicholas cared about stability , he would allow these groups to exist , unless it pleased him for them to unleash violence on perceived opponents including Jews . Not being a political party isn't relevant to me. He supported and sympathized with their aims.  Does that make him  Stalin ? Of course not . He was nowhere near as astute or as ruthless. God would see things right in the end and he would answer only to god. Standard despotic amorality coupled with fatalism - a common affliction in tyrants throughout history , as is anti-semitism. Your wish to portray him and his empire as anodyne and essentially benevolent, and even somewhat democratic and progressive , when there is ample evidence to the contrary , baffles me , as does your tendency to compare Tsarism favourably to its repugnant successor - Bolshevism . It's an easy get out clause .  Your tolerance level for Tsarism is higher than mine. Your definition of 'police state' clearly differs from mine.

The 'bad taste'  is your failure to seriously confront and condemn the Tsars personal anti-semitism and to belittle the sufferings of Jews under his rule .

[NicolasG]

The article itself is of little importance . It is one article and it is hostile to the tsars - hence your disgust , and attempts to savage Greg King and Penny Wilson , two well respected Romanov experts. However , numerous  primary sources , letters , documents , diary entries, etc , ARE important . Nicholas condemns himself in the sources. Sorry if you disagree.

No I did not say extermination was on the Tsars mind, nor am I trying to prove so. Anti-semitic thoughts certainly were .

I questioned why , if Nicholas cared about stability , he would allow these groups to exist , unless it pleased him for them to unleash violence on perceived opponents including Jews . Not being a political party isn't relevant to me. He supported and sympathized with their aims.  Does that make him  Stalin ? Of course not . He was nowhere near as astute or as ruthless. God would see things right in the end and he would answer only to god. Standard despotic amorality coupled with fatalism - a common affliction in tyrants throughout history , as is anti-semitism. Your wish to portray him and his empire as anodyne and essentially benevolent, and even somewhat democratic and progressive , when there is ample evidence to the contrary , baffles me , as does your tendency to compare Tsarism favourably to its repugnant successor - Bolshevism . It's an easy get out clause .  Your tolerance level for Tsarism is higher than mine. Your definition of 'police state' clearly differs from mine.

The 'bad taste'  is your failure to seriously confront and condemn the Tsars personal anti-semitism and to belittle the sufferings of Jews under his rule .

Look, it is very difficult to have a discussion with someone that cannot follow a quite simple argument.

Ok, let's accept your argument: pogroms happened because Nicholas II allowed them to happen. Therefore Nicholas II also allowed his uncle Sergei to be blown to bits, his Minister of Interior Plehve and Prime Minister Stolypin to be murdered, the cruiser Potemkin to mutiny, peasants to plunder manors in the countryside, revolutionary propaganda to be smuggled into Russia, revolutionaries to scape from their place of exile, banks to be robbed and finally, the monarchy to be overthrown.

The Tsar's being an autocratic ruler does not mean that he was all-powerful and had a total control of everything that happened in the Russian Empire. He couldn't.

Let me say what I find not "bad taste", but simply disgusting: Someone joins a forum devoted to the memory of a family that were cruelly murdered, spouts insults ("despot", "amoral" and "tyrant" just in your last post), suggests that they to certain extent deserved their fate (at least, the parents) because they "harbored anti-Semitic thoughts" and shows more sympathy for the murderers ("Yurovsky wanted to minimize their suffering") than for the victims.

If you have a minimum of intellectual honesty, could you answer with YES or NO a simple question?

Did Emperor Nicholas II or Empress Alexandra plan, promote or endorse the beating, robbery, murder or rape of their Jewish subjects? That is, did they take part in organizing pogroms?

[Lochlanach]

The article itself is of little importance . It is one article and it is hostile to the tsars - hence your disgust , and attempts to savage Greg King and Penny Wilson , two well respected Romanov experts. However , numerous  primary sources , letters , documents , diary entries, etc , ARE important . Nicholas condemns himself in the sources. Sorry if you disagree.

No I did not say extermination was on the Tsars mind, nor am I trying to prove so. Anti-semitic thoughts certainly were .

I questioned why , if Nicholas cared about stability , he would allow these groups to exist , unless it pleased him for them to unleash violence on perceived opponents including Jews . Not being a political party isn't relevant to me. He supported and sympathized with their aims.  Does that make him  Stalin ? Of course not . He was nowhere near as astute or as ruthless. God would see things right in the end and he would answer only to god. Standard despotic amorality coupled with fatalism - a common affliction in tyrants throughout history , as is anti-semitism. Your wish to portray him and his empire as anodyne and essentially benevolent, and even somewhat democratic and progressive , when there is ample evidence to the contrary , baffles me , as does your tendency to compare Tsarism favourably to its repugnant successor - Bolshevism . It's an easy get out clause .  Your tolerance level for Tsarism is higher than mine. Your definition of 'police state' clearly differs from mine.

The 'bad taste'  is your failure to seriously confront and condemn the Tsars personal anti-semitism and to belittle the sufferings of Jews under his rule .

Look, it is very difficult to have a discussion with someone that cannot follow a quite simple argument.

Ok, let's accept your argument: pogroms happened because Nicholas II allowed them to happen. Therefore Nicholas II also allowed his uncle Sergei to be blown to bits, his Minister of Interior Plehve and Prime Minister Stolypin to be murdered, the cruiser Potemkin to mutiny, peasants to plunder manors in the countryside, revolutionary propaganda to be smuggled into Russia, revolutionaries to scape from their place of exile, banks to be robbed and finally, the monarchy to be overthrown.

The Tsar's being an autocratic ruler does not mean that he was all-powerful and had a total control of everything that happened in the Russian Empire. He couldn't.

Let me say what I find not "bad taste", but simply disgusting: Someone joins a forum devoted to the memory of a family that were cruelly murdered, spouts insults ("despot", "amoral" and "tyrant" just in your last post), suggests that they to certain extent deserved their fate (at least, the parents) because they "harbored anti-Semitic thoughts" and shows more sympathy for the murderers ("Yurovsky wanted to minimize their suffering") than for the victims.

If you have a minimum of intellectual honesty, could you answer with YES or NO a simple question?

Did Emperor Nicholas II or Empress Alexandra plan, promote or endorse the beating, robbery, murder or rape of their Jewish subjects? That is, did they take part in organizing pogroms?

Obviously the tsar wasn't some all controlling , all knowing , vengeful maniac responsible for every act of violence in his empire . Only a deluded, rabid anti-monarchist would believe such nonsense.  That is not MY 'simple' argument and you know it . In this case  I am pointing to evidence of his personal anti-semitism (and many would agree there is ample evidence of it) and questioning his handling of , and relationships with , anti-semitism , pogroms , terror groups, etc, in his empire  . What did he have to do to show he was anti-semitic ?  Walk down the Nevsky Prospekt with a placard stating 'I am an anti-semite'

On to the other 'simple' question, and what you find 'simply disgusting'. Considering what we are discussing, I find this an inappropriate moment to accuse ME of all people of behaving in a 'disgusting' manner . You are righteously indignant when people attempt to rationalize George V's decision not to rescue the Tsar , and passionately rail against any criticism of the Tsar , his prejudices and his system  - how about a similar display of passionate indignation against the Tsars anti-semitic comments, among other things ?

You wish to venerate the memory of the tsar and his family and not subject them to scrutiny  ? Fine . You can do that in your own time,  and there are plenty of Russian Orthodox Church websites for that too, and indeed your posts sometimes remind me of the uncritical literature the ROC has produced on these matters. This a forum ,not a place of veneration,  hence you have to deal with people who disagree with you . You dislike my views ? Fine . I often dislike yours . They  appear to be biased, partial and agenda-driven . And sometimes you make fair points that I agree with . Yes, that was a compliment, which you scarcely deserve after posting such a provocative hatchet job.

 I will continue to provide my views  on the forum whenever I am moved to do so ( which in fact isn't very often) or until I am told I cannot do so anymore . I defy you or  anybody else to point to any posts or comments I have made that 'cross a line ' . I also ask you to understand that not everyone on the forum views the Romanovs as sympathetically as you do, or views Tsarism as a positive force . Many didn't when it existed , and many feel that way now . 'Questioning' is not 'disrespecting'. I have said many times Tsarism was preferable to Communism , but that I fundamentally dislike both .

To deal with specifics - cruelly murdered ? Yes. Spouting insults ? I contest they were not insults but fair criticisms. Deserving their fate to a certain extent ? Absolutely not . I have made that very clear , and I will do it again - I am absolutely AGAINST the  murder or execution of ANYBODY for ANY reason . Sympathy for the perpetrators ? Why would I sympathise with a psychopath like Ermakov , or support Yurovsky shooting a boy twice in the head out of 'revolutionary duty' ? I pointed out there is little evidence Yurovsky relished the killings and that the bloody chaos that followed the botched first volley of shots wasn't his intention , that is all . I sympathize with the victims not the perpetrators.