My name is Ryan, and I wanted to briefly share my story with the whole community. For the last year, I have considered myself a staunch Marxist-Leninist, and used to defend Lenin as if I was a member of the Bolshevik Party. Like most Leninists in the twenty-first century, I defended Lenin and criticized Stalin as a traitor to Communism and the Revolution, while refusing to simply open my eyes and realize that Lenin betrayed both Communism and the ideals of the Russian Revolution right after he came to power. I have never been in favor of the murder of the Imperial Family—as part of my Marxist viewpoint— however I refused to judge Lenin based on it until recently, along with the Red Terror campaign, which claimed 800 lives in two months (Sep-Oct) in 1918 in Lenin's Red Terror campaign. I didn't want to see the other side.
Having been a Russian history buff for about a year now, in May, while on YouTube, I came across a video I had never heard—The Romanovs: An Imperial Family. At first, I didn’t plan on watching it, because I already knew all I needed to know about the Romanovs (representative of extreme indoctrination). I couldn’t sleep, it was about 2a.m., and it was something new, so I convinced myself to watch it. By the time I was halfway through it, while I was most supportive of Lenin, I felt great sympathy for Alexei (played by Vladimir Grashko), for the first time having actually seen what he went through (I understand his dilemma because I have had type 1—insulin-dependent—diabetes since I was 16). I was touched the talk that Pierre Gilliard and Alexei had, watching Nicholas be taken away to Yekaterinburg. The soft musical undertone, and Gilliard sadly telling Alexei he will always be “majesty” to him. Then Yakov Sverdlov ruins the moment by ordering that Alexei and his sisters be sent to Yekaterinburg as well. What finally changed my opinion of Nicholas was the scene in Nicholas and Alexandra where Nicholas responded to Yurovsky (who said he was a murderous Tsar) “I have since realized that a strong man has no need for power, and a weak man is corrupted by it.” That epitaph describes Lenin accurately.
I have experience both sides. I understand the Leninist viewpoint and still sympathize with aspects of it; but I cannot sympathize with the cruelty and naivety, initiated and perpetuated by Lenin, that led a small group of young men to brutally murder an entire family—two parents, three young adults, and two children—and a few loyal servants in a basement, indoctrinated by the false idea that this would all end in utopia. In fighting for social justice, it is vital that the death penalty be abolished.
It is in memory of the youngest of the eleven killed 93 years ago—Alexis Romanov, the last Emperor of Russia--that I have created this account.
Tsar Alexei II
