Martyrdom, Sainthood. Reburial and Commemoration of IF

[Greta]

Hi all,

Tis late here, but I have a saved a few Australian newspapers from around the time of the burial and I'll try to scan them in (if anyone is interested)  

The articles mention Yeltsin, Michael Romanoff (Xenia's grandson)? Prince Nicholas and the Melniks there.  Apparently Patriach Alexiy II conducted a separate service.

[Teddy]

Thanks, Teddy. Do you know of any reason why Yeltsin didn't extend the invitations? Did he see it a primarily an internal Russian matter? Or were his views more political.
On a purely human level, it would seem that it would have been a noble gesture to invite them if only because of their family links to the IF.  :-/

Bluetoria I think that Yeltsin saw it as a internal Russian matter. No outsiders at all.

They only invite those whose roots are very close with the Romanovs. For example Queen Beatrix who is a Romanov descendant by birth had to little Romanov-blood left to be invited. Her great-great-great-grandmother Anna Pavlovna was the daughter of Tsar Paul.

But the House of Orange was never a big fan of the House of Romanov.For example Queen Wilhelmina (granddaughter of Anna P) said once in not so many words, that the Tsar was very stupid and not clever at all. So I think that if Queen Beatrix had an invitation it on her to go or not. Its not a must.

[bluetoria]

Hello Greta, welcome to the forum!   It would be lovely if you could post the info sometime.

Thank you Teddy; I understand the reasoning now, but it still seems a shame, really. Thanks!

[ferngully]

i meant that the church didn't seem happy about it, thats what i read anyways
selina                 xxxxxxxx

[lexi4]

I realize the Orthodox church performed the burials, but I seem to recall reading that they did so without using the name Romanov because they were not convinced the bodies were actually those of the IF. Anyone else remember anything like that? I think I read this in The Secret Plot to Save the Tsar.

[Robert_Hall]

That is true. They were given Orthodox funeral rites as victims of the violence. The fact that the only other people buried in that church are Romanovs does tell a lot more though.

[Greta]

Hi Bluetoria,

Thanks for the welcome!  

Unfortunately my scanning skills are a bit left to be desired   , so here's the text of the article:

"THEY BURIED YESTERDAY'S TSAR BUT MOURNED TODAY's RUSSIA

Neela Banerjee, St Petersburg
Sydney Morning Herald, 18 July 1998

In the end, the burial of Russia's last tsar turned out to be the burial of just a man.

Many had hoped that when the remains of Nicholas II were lowered into a concrete crypt yesterday, 80 days to the day since he and his family were executed by the Bolsheviks, Russians would begin a reckoning with their past and, through it, come together as a nation.

Yet beneath the pomp of 19-gun salutes, honour guards and solemn dignataries, Russia remains splintered, and hopes of reconciliation feel naive.

President Yeltsin, with his predictable unpredictability, decided at the last minute to attend the funeral.

"We must close this century which, for Russia, has been a bloody century, by repentance," said  Mr Yeltsin, bowing towards the nine coffins of the tsar, his wife, three of his daughters, and four faithful retainers, all murdered together. "For long years we remained silent on this monstrous crime.  But we must tell the truth.  The execution in Yekaterinburg was one of the most shameful pages in our history."

"In committing to the earth the bodies of these innocents, we wish to wipe clean the sin which this act of outrageous cruelty represented."

The burial was "an act of human justice, a symbol of the unity of the poeple, of collective guilt", he said, being careful not to mention the Romanov name for fear of upsetting the Russian Orthodox Church.

The head of the church stayed away, after his scathing attack on the authenticity of the remains.  Many politicians also bowed out.

More importantly, Russians themselves are divided about the funeral, and sceptical of official findings about the remains' authenticity, because they doubt anything told to them by the Yeltsin Government.

Against this backdrop of discord, the extended Romanov family, descendants of the tsarist line, have come to St Petersburg in a bittersweet reunion.

(Continued in next post)

[Greta]

(Continued)

Michael Romanoff, a 78-year old Sydney retiree and grandnephew of Nicholas II, said "The Church's deision to stay away may have taken away soome of the glitter from the occasion, but we didn't want glitter.  We wanted something solemn, quiet, a chance for reconciliation."

Mr Romanoff and his long-lost family have emerged perhaps as an unexpected example to the rest of Russia.

Many have come for the first time to a country whose leaders butchered their ancestors.  They've had the Church turn away from the funeral and the Government skimp on funding.  Regardless of what they feel privately about all this,  the far-flung Romanovs publicly show a dignified gratitude for the chance to bury their dead.

Mr Romanoff, a slight man with black hair and a thin, straight mustache, stood in the lobby of the posh Hotel Astoria the day before the funeral, looking from one relative to another as they milled about exchanging kisses and family gossip.

"I've never met two-thirds of them," he said with an almost childlike glee for having met them now.  "And there are others, like my brother and my cousin, whom I hadn't seen for more than 30 years".

There are 62 Romanovs attending the funeral, the largest gathering of the family since before the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution.  The descendants of the dynasty ruled Russia for more than 300 years have adopted different countries and met varied fates.

After coming to Australia following World War II, Mr Romanoff became an aviation engineer and entrepreneur.  Pavel Illinsky is the mayor of Palm Beach, Florida.  They all speak an old-fashioned, gracious Russian.  They've come with their spouses, most not Russian, and suntanned grandchildren who remember endless dinner conversation about the tsar.

Konstantin Melnik isn't a Romanov, but he is the closest relative to a victim of the executions among those attending.  The 70-year old Parisian's maternal grandfather was Dr Yevgeny Botkin, the family physician to the Romanovs and a close friend of the tsar.

Dr Botkin and three other attendants were given the chance by the Communists to abandon the royal family, but they remained, only to be shot and bayoneted to death with the Romanovs in the basement of a Yekaterinburg house after the Bolsheviks panicked over the enemy Tsarist Army's advance on the Urals city.

(Continued in next post)

[Greta]

(Continued from prior post)

Mr Melnik's mother went into exile with her father to Siberia, before being separated from him when he and the royal family were sent to Yekaterinburg.

"We never thought there were any remains to be found, so it was a great shock when they were discovered," he says.

The bonees, fragments and skulls, were scarred by acid which the Bolsheviks used to thwart identificatioin, were found in 1991 in a forest outside Yekaterinburg.  Seven years of DNA tests followed in Russia, the US and Britain.  Mr Melnik sent his blood samples to Russia as did some European royalty related to the Romanovs.  Finally, earlier this year, a Russian government commission vouched for the remains.

Since arriving in St Petersburg, the Romanovs have tried to show that though they have lst much they are willing to forgive and move on.  "That's the first lesson we've given them," says Nicholas Romanov, the tsaar's cousin, "that we have to separate life now from the life in the past, that we leave that to the historians.  I don't know if they understand this now.  But they will."

[hikaru]

In the cathedral there are all photos of Attendants.
There were quite a lot of them from Italy, U.S. A. Canada etc.
When I will be next time there I will copy the names for you, Bluetoria.
I think that they are not so famouse.

[bluetoria]

Thank you very much Greta for taking the time to post this! The message of forgiveness is very moving. Thank you.  

Thank you hikaru, too, for offering to find the names of the attendants; it's very kind of you.  

[La_Mashka]

Greta,


That was a very interesting article, thank you for sharing it.

[lexi4]

Greta,
Thank you so much. I really enjoyed reading that.

[pablo]

  Funeral's pictures,

http://www.romanovfundforrussia.org/funeral.html

 Regards.

[bluetoria]

Thank you for posting this link, pablo  , but I cannot see it. It always comes up as 'Page cannot be displayed'. Does anyone else have this problem?  :-/