rape

[Sarushka]

So, OK.  This doesn't prove any physical harm came to anyone, however, I wonder what Nicholas meant by "moral suffering"?  He doesn't say "physical" suffering, but moral suffering could mean anything from jeers and epithets to physical torture and rape.  Rape would be terrible for their morals.

"Moral suffering" on the part of the children could also refer to any or all of the following:

[*]separation from their parents
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[*]not knowing where their parents were being taken
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[*]not knowing when they would be reunited
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[*]spending the Easter holidays alone for the first time
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[*]being held under arrest
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[*]caring for a sick brother
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[Alixz]

We might in our time refer to those things a psycological or emotional suffering.

Nicholas might have recognized emotional suffering, but not pschological as even Freud was just getting started and I would imagine that his writings were not something that Nicholas would be familiar with.

Moral, to me at least, seems to indicate some danger to their mortal souls or something that would "corrupt" their morals, those tenents that they were taught to live by.  By example seeing or doing things that would be abhorant to them in a normal world.

Perhaps we need some input from our Russian Orthodox posters on the religious aspect of "moral suffering".

As for being under house arrest, that had been going on for some time.  Caring for a sick brother, Dr Botkin had left for Ekateringerg, so I guess they were on their own for the first time with that.

I am not trying to be argumentative, but the other points just seem to me not to me a "moral" problem.  That is why I guess we would need to know what the definition of "moral" was in 1918 in Russia and in Nicholas's vocabulary.

[Robert_Hall]

Could it not  mean "morale", i.e. dis-spiritedness, sense of defeat ?

[Alixz]

Robert,

I suppose it could, but he didn't say "morale" at least in translation he didn't.

Were his diaries written in English or Russian or what?

Of course in both books (Kurth's and Bokhanov's), they are translated differently and by that I mean the order of the words and the words themselves are similar but not exactly the same.  That is all of the words except "moral".

[Sarushka]

Were his diaries written in English or Russian or what?

Russian.

[Georgiy]

My (Russian) wife sometimes uses 'moral' in a sense where it's negative would be lack of civility, good behaviour, decency, ethics etc.

[Maj. Jesse Cairns]

Hi ;
My twin was looking through my Romanov book collection  [which continues to grow as I speak] and he said [ about a week ago] that he READ concise, and unequivocal statements by one book's author that  the GD's had been "violated"--post mortem--and that even after the burial, the soldiers would go back night after night to repeat the gruesome deeds.

My comments :  Now-- if there is NO clear proof/documentation of said heinous acts, then such statements is not only poor scholarship, but unprofessional and grotesquely libelous.  I would be amazed that the surviving Romanovs would not take such a person to task--but maybe it is simpy not worth the efffort involved.
Notwithstanding, I would like to see that author's sources.
I will ask my twin which Romanov book contained said statements.  I HOPE that the statements are totally FALSE.

But, let me add this :  there is in Russia TODAY [and also back in 1918] a spirit that is pervasive among isolated individual  cases--be they ever so few--where some individuals find pleasure mixing  HORROR with LEWDNESS.    The scary / banal cartoons drawn by the soldiers in the Ipatiev House restroom  attests to this weird penchant.  Again, it is probably isolated cases and I know that the same penchant also existed in Germany [in art] in the 1920s and  TODAY, the States are no longer immune to such indecencies.  It's abolutely Grotty!

Some people find merging the LEWD and HORRIFIC appealing.   Need I be more graphic?   Hmmmm?
So, it is not impossible that the condition of the IF--post mortem was NOT a complete BARRIER to such acts.

The facts are simple, we pray that such things did NOT happen to our beloved NAOTMAA, and I hope that the author who made such statements was simply being a "sensationalist" who invented some crappy lies to get a wider reading of his book.   If that is TRULY the case, then I breathe much better--as it were--for the IF, and simultaneously disdain the author who invented such " pig and filth"  [to quote Anastasia]

[Tsarfan]

even after the burial, the soldiers would go back night after night to repeat the gruesome deeds.

So they'd go back, dig up the bodies, molest them, and then rebury them?

Just what this Forum needed . . . a necrophilia discussion.

Thanks for starting it.  I'm sure your "beloved NAAOTMA" would appreciate it.

[Elisabeth]

Just what this Forum needed . . . a necrophilia discussion.

Ugh. And may I say it again, ugh. I agree with you, Tsarfan. And might I say, out of respect for the IF, if not out of respect for people visiting this forum (perhaps that would be too much to ask for!), I wish we could just keep the prurient voyeurism out of the discussion all together. What purpose does it serve?

As regards the sexually explicit graffiti found in the Ipatiev House lavatory by White investigators, hasn't it occurred to anyone that this graffiti might have only appeared after the murders of the IF? Then and only then did the interior guard have the complete run of the place, while Yurovsky was away for two entire days, trying to dispose of the corpses. Before that the only people permitted to use the upstairs lavatory were the two guards on duty upstairs, plus the Commandant and his assistant, plus the imperial family and their entourage. Granted, that's a lot of people to be using a single bathroom. But I don't see any reason to believe that an unhygienic situation necessarily led to an overtly abusive one while the family was still alive, via sexually explicit graffiti portraying the Empress and Rasputin and repeating obscene ditties about the former tsar. Of course, we have no way of knowing, but this explanation seems to me every bit as plausible as the traditional one, that the family saw the graffiti and was offended by it.  But if they were so offended, why didn't Nicholas mention it in his diary? He certainly mentions other offenses the family was subjected to... No, to my mind, it doesn't add up.

[Sarushka]

It's my understanding that the bodies of the IF were somewhat disrespected prior to burial in 1918, but NOT defiled.

[Tsarina_Liz]

It's my understanding that the bodies of the IF were somewhat disrespected prior to burial in 1918, but NOT defiled.

A bunch of drunk guards running on adrenaline, fatigue and some fueled with patriotic fervor - I don't think it would be out of the question to say that there may have been some post-moretem groping.  It's not like it's unheard of.  But necrophelia?  I sincerely doubt that.  Sounds like White or Monarchist propoganda.  

[Tsarfan]

As regards the sexually explicit graffiti found in the Ipatiev House lavatory by White investigators, hasn't it occurred to anyone that this graffiti might have only appeared after the murders of the IF?

But if they were so offended, why didn't Nicholas mention it in his diary? He certainly mentions other offenses the family was subjected to... No, to my mind, it doesn't add up.

Please, Elisabeth.  Such conjecture on your part can only arise from applying thought to some of these reports.

Really . . . I think you're asking too much of us.

It's much more fun just to take titillating reports and run with them.  Fun, fun, fun.

[Maj. Jesse Cairns]

( a digression for the sake of Tsarfan )

I did not mean to be banal.  I am interested in Truth, whether it is Biblical Truth or the clear facts concerning other areas of interest.    If you will go and check my post, I only ALLUDED to.   So, for Tsarfan's sake, I want to state without nebulousness, that I do not intend to get into a GRAPHIC dialogue concerning Necrophilia.
There are people on this forum under age . . . which leads me to believe that someday forums will probably require proof of a newbie's age.

            (Digression over)  

Now, for Elisabeth :  you wonder WHY Niki never put such and such things into his personal diary entries if those things happened  [such as bathroom banalities upon the walls].  It is quite simple, Elisabeth :  Nicholas was a gentleman and would not even ACKNOWLEDGE such a grotty thing.   After studying their personalities, I even think if someone "ravished"  [not violated] one of OTMA, then I think that out of courtesy to them, he would not have even dared to mention something of that level.   Gentlemen--back then--were required to overlook insults, degrading remarks, or obsenities.
People who belched or who made other weird noises were given no public reprimand.    Things like that were simply not given ANY "press."

If I may stretch it a bit, if one of OTMA had even been violated against her will, Niki would have been HOPPING mad, but he also knew that if ANY of them made TOO big a "ruckous" over how they were being treated, it was also APPARENT to him that the Bolshiviks could be dangerously capricious and HIGHLY MERCURIAL.   The Bolshevekii could've  had them all done away with out of sheer spite!   Remember, we are talking about  BOLSHEVIKII--the Master Morons of Maniacal Mischief . . . and Niki knew it.  He may have been naive in some things, but he also knew honourable soldiers and their orientation as opposed to a veritable Brigade of Blighters, Brigands, and Blagards.    The I.F. were walking in a minefield, as it were---IMHO  

--Jesse

[Tsarfan]

Nicholas accused the guards of thievery in the pilfering of their personal effects, both openly to the commandants and in his diary.

And he compromised his eldest daughter by having her write a response to purported rescuers, presumably knowing the risk of having such correspondence intercepted.

So . . . Nicholas would accuse the guards of thievery, but let the sexual molestation of his daughters pass unprotested?

And . . . Nicholas, who was so lucidly mindful of the maniacal volatility of his captors, thought it prudent to produce written proof that one of his children was involved in an escape attempt?

I really think the application of at least a modicum of critical reasoning to these claims might advance the cause of "Truth" a bit further.

[Elisabeth]

Hear, hear Tsarfan. Major Jesse, with all due respect, there's no evidence whatsoever to suggest that the grand duchesses were ever molested during their imprisonment, either in Tsarskoe Selo, Tobolsk, or Ekaterinburg. I think that even to speculate in this direction is more than a tad irresponsible.

As far as the lavatory at the Ipatiev House goes, is it really likely that Nicholas would have sat in that same lavatory for hours on end if offensive, pornographic graffiti about himself and his wife was scrawled all over the walls? And yet that’s precisely what he did, according to a note he wrote and inserted in his diary, a note which was discovered months later by White investigators. According to them, it "recounted how, suffering from hemorrhoids, he had one day sat on the toilet in the Ipatiev House for hours, watching a spider slowly build its web across the ceiling" (King and Wilson, FOTR, p. 341). I don’t know about you, but this bit of information actually makes me like Nicholas Alexandrovich as a person much more than I’m usually inclined to… there’s something all too humanly affecting about a man in pain but also bored out of his skull watching a spider spin its web for hours on end because he’s not fit or able to do anything else.