Greetings all!
As I mentioned in my posting under “Upcoming books in 2012”, for many years now our monastery (
http://www.thehtm.org ) has been preparing to publish the collected letters of the Imperial family from captivity in an English translation.
When I say “for many years”, I mean precisely that. It's hard to believe now, but we actually began this project in 1981, thinking that it would take us just a few years to gather all the materials! Because of the many demands of our monastic life and our primary duties here at the monastery, this project has always been an “extracurricular activity” which we pursue in our “spare time”. More than once we have been forced to set this project aside for months, even years, but we have never given up on it.
And actually, the long delay has proven to be quite providential. In the intervening years so many more letters have come to light, and so many controversies and riddles concerning the Imperial Family’s death and burial have been resolved.
Several times we thought that we could wind up the project and go to print, only to have new archives open up and additional letters become available. And who would have believed back in 1981 that in ten years the USSR would be no more?!
The book which formed the original core of our project was Mr. E. E. Alferief’s Russian edition: “The Letters of the Tsar’s Family From Captivity, a review of which appears on the Alexander Palace Time Machine site.
http://www.alexanderpalace.org/palace/books.html?sku=95A fuller description of our projected publication (accenting the spiritual aspects of these letters) appeared in our diocesan journal in 1992. But regardless of how one views the Imperial family, these letters, as primary documents, will be of interest to a wide range of readers.
http://www.saintannas.com/Archived_Docs_HTM/TV14OnImperialLetters.pdf(Note: If the above link does not work on Safari, try using another browser, such as Firefox.)
As a postscript to the above article, I would like to add that we now have over 450 letters written by the Imperial family during the time of their captivity. Included in that number are some of those which earlier we had requested our readers to help us find. Most of these letters were written in Russian, ten or twelve in German, several in French, and a few in English.
I see that various posters on this forum have already furnished translations of many of these letters. Sarushka, Nena, Shandroise, Lanie and others have done an admirable job. In addition to more letters, we also have been able to find the longer, unedited originals of many of the letters which already appear here on the forum.
And as I stated earlier, this new thread is meant not so much to “plug” a proposed book, as it is to request your collaboration and assistance. I am not sure how that aspect will evolve, but certainly some of you could be a great help to us in deciphering the full names of those mentioned only by their initials in countless letters. Many we have already discovered, while others still remain an enigma to us.
While working on the letters, we would also like to post some short comments throughout the forum on various topics, concerning which we may have pertinent information, based on our thirty years of research. However, we cannot permit ourselves (much as we would like) to get involved in lengthy discussions on any one topic, since that would deflect us from our primary goal of preparing the Imperial letters for publication.
In advance: thank you for your interest and assistance!
