Russia buries the czar
ni...@glasnet.ru
US News and World Report
July 27, 1998
Russia buries the czar but not its squabbles
Yeltsin shows up, the patriarch doesn't
BY CHRISTIAN CARYL
ST. PETERSBURG, RUSSIA--When Russia finally got around to burying the
czar and his family last week, 80 years late, some of the people in the
crowd were far from reverent. Valery Zhukov, a middle-aged physics
teacher, stood in a line of Communist demonstrators holding up signs
saying, "The bloody czar is being buried by the democrats, the traitors
of Russia." "I don't think that these are the bones of the czar,"
insisted Zhukov. "The Russian Orthodox Church and the Russian Orthodox
Church Abroad aren't taking part because they know perfectly well that
the czar is buried somewhere else."
That drew a snort from Oleksa Polisharov, a 64-year-old engineer, who
declared that the bones of the czar were indisputably authentic and that
Patriarch Alexei II, the head of the Orthodox Church, who conspicuously
skipped the ceremony, was a "puppet of the Bolsheviks . . . chosen by
the KGB."
Clearly, the emotions awakened in Russia by the czar's burial have
something to do with politics but a whole lot to do with religion. As
the nine small wooden coffins were laid to rest in the incense-filled,
pink-and-blue St. Peter and Paul Cathedral, President Boris Yeltsin, who
conspicuously turned up at the ceremony, struck an overtly religious
note: "By giving to the earth the remains of these murdered innocents,
we want to atone for the sins of our forebears."
In 1918, after a grass-roots revolution and the Communist coup that
followed, Nicholas II, his family, and four of their servants were shot
by Bolsheviks in the city of Yekaterinburg. In 1979, their remains were
secretly dug from a pit along a forest road described by one of the
executioners in his diary. After a long series of DNA tests, a
government commission finally ruled early this year that the bones were
authentic and should be given a proper burial in St. Petersburg,
traditional resting place of the Romanov dynasty.
While the country was gearing up for a major spectacle, however,
Patriarch Alexei II unexpectedly announced that the Orthodox Church
would not participate in the ceremony. To avoid offending Orthodox
believers, Yeltsin at first followed the patriarch's lead. He reversed
himself at the last minute and showed up, along with thousands of his
countrymen.
Yeltsin's initial decision underlined the government's rapprochement
with the Orthodox Church. In theory, the government is secular. But
Russia's leaders have embraced the church and other symbols of
nationhood to try to shore up their collapsing popularity. Ironically,
the revolutionaries who murdered the last czar were trying to sever
those same emotional links between the people, religion, and the state.
Nowadays the church consistently ranks as one of the few institutions
that Russians still respect; they may not attend services, but most
consider Orthodoxy an important ingredient of a true Russian's identity.
Politicians are correspondingly eager to be seen in the company of the
patriarch. And last year the Orthodox Church successfully pressured the
parliament to impose legal restrictions on missionaries of other faiths.
Hedging its bets. That lobbying effort is a clue to why the church was
unenthusiastic about burying the czar. "The patriarchate is worried
about the divide, the resistance, and the controversy in society," says
Viktor Aksyuchits, an adviser to the Russian government on religious
issues, who supervised arrangements for the burial. In plain language,
the Orthodox Church has to hedge its bets because it has competitors to
worry about. Foremost among them is the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad,
founded in 1920 by priests who fled Russia with the aristocracy. Going
into exile saved the émigré church from the dubious moral compromises
demanded under communism.
That has left the Church Abroad on the high ground, exemplified in its
1981 decision to declare Nicholas a saint, a step that the Moscow
patriarchate continues to wrestle with. The Church Abroad has sharpened
the competition by trying to re-establish its own network of churches
within Russia. But at least the two branches of the church do agree on
one point: that the bones buried last week are not authentic. The church
in exile insists that it has the real remains, including a finger bone
of the Empress Alexandra, in a leather box embedded in the wall of the
Church of St. Job the Long-Suffering in Brussels.
*******
Voice of America
DATE=7/19/98
TITLE=ROMANOV REUNION
BYLINE=PETER HEINLEIN
DATELINE=ST. PETERSBURG
INTRO: LAST WEEK'S REBURIAL OF TSAR NICHOLAS THE SECOND WAS THE
OCCASION FOR A REUNION OF THE ROMANOV FAMILY THAT RULED RUSSIA
FOR THREE CENTURIES. V-O-A'S PETER HEINLEIN COVERED THE EVENT,
AND FOUND ONE BRANCH OF THE ROMANOV CLAN STILL VERY MUCH INVOLVED
IN GOVERNING...BUT IN THE UNITED STATES.
TEXT: THE ROMANOV ERA IN RUSSIAN POLITICS IS HISTORY. AND TO
JUDGE BY THE COMMENTS OF FAMILY ELDERS, SUCH AS 75-YEAR OLD
NICHOLAS ROMANOV, A GRAND NEPHEW OF THE LAST TSAR, MOST FAMILY
MEMBERS ARE PERFECTLY CONTENT TO LEAVE IT THAT WAY.
///NICHOLAS ROMANOV ACT///
WE DON'T LIVE IN THE PAST. WE KNOW THE PAST. WE
RESPECT IT. BUT WE'RE LIVING IN OUR WORLD. EVEN I LIVE
IN THE PRESENT, AND AT MY AGE I'M LOOKING FORWARD, NOT
BACKWARD.
///END ACT///
NICHOLAS ROMANOV REPEATEDLY STRESSED THAT HE IS NOT A
POLITICIAN, AND HAS NO DESIRE TO BE ONE, EITHER IN RUSSIA OR IN
HIS ADOPTED COUNTRY, SWITZERLAND.
BUT NOT ALL HIS RELATIVES AGREE. IN FACT, ONE FAMILY MEMBER
ATTENDING THE RE-BURIAL SERVICE IS A VETERAN POLITICIAN.
SEVENTY-YEAR OLD PAUL ROMANOV ILYINSKY, A GREAT-GRANDSON OF TSAR
ALEXANDER THE SECOND, IS THE ELECTED MAYOR OF PALM BEACH,
FLORIDA.
WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE CONTROVERSY WITHIN RUSSIA ABOUT THE REBURIAL
OF TSAR NICHOLAS, MR. ILYINSKY'S POLITICAL INSTINCTS TOOK OVER.
///PAUL ILYINSKY ACT///
I'M AN AMERICAN POLITICIAN, THOUGH WAY DOWN THE TOTEM
POLE, BUT NEVERTHELESS A POLITICIAN, AND I THINK THAT'S
AN INTERNAL POLITICAL PROBLEM RUSSIA IS HAVING NOW.
///END ACT///
MR. ILYINSKY, WHO EXPERTS SAY COULD MAKE A CLAIM TO THE RUSSIAN
THRONE, SAYS THE ONLY JOB HE WANTS IS THE ONE HE ALREADY HAS.
///2ND PAUL ILYINSKY ACT///
I'VE BEEN THE MAYOR OF PALM BEACH FOR A LONG TIME -- ON
THE CITY COUNCIL 17 YEARS, COUNCIL PRESIDENT ONCE, AND
NOW MAYOR -- AND WHETHER BEING A ROMANOV HAS HELPED ME
DO THAT, I DON'T KNOW, OR WHETHER BEING THE MAYOR OF
PALM BEACH HAS HELPED ME BE A BETTER ROMANOV, I DON'T
KNOW THAT, EITHER. BUT IN ANY EVENT THEY SEEM TO GO
TOGETHER. NOW I'M AN ELECTED ROMANOV.
///END ACT///
MAYOR ILYINSKY'S SON, 38-YEAR OLD MICHAEL ILYINSKY OF CINCINNATI,
OHIO, WAS ALSO IN ST. PETERSBURG FOR THE REBURIAL SERVICES. HE
SAYS HE HAS NO INTEREST IN POLITICS, BUT WHEN ASKED ABOUT
SQUABBLES AMONG VARIOUS ROMANOV FAMILY FACTIONS, HE TOO, SOUNDED
LIKE A POLITICIAN.
///MICHAEL ILYINSKY ACT///
THE POLITICS ARE THERE, SOME PERHAPS ARE REAL, SOME ARE
IMAGINED. AND I'M NOT AWARE OF ALL OF THEM. AM I
TALKING AROUND YOUR QUESTION? (HEINLEIN: "A LITTLE BIT")
THAT'S THE POLITICIAN IN ME. IT'S GENETIC.
///END ACT///
AND WHEN ASKED ABOUT THE REUNION OF ROMANOVS FROM EUROPE, THE
UNITED STATES AND EVEN AUSTRALIA FOR THE REBURIAL SERVICE, MR.
ILYINSKY HAD A TYPICAL AMERICAN REACTION.
///2ND MICHAEL ILYINSKY ACT///
I THINK IT'S AWESOME. ANYTIME WE GET TOGETHER IT'S
WONDERFUL.
///END ACT///
HE SAYS THE AMERICAN BRANCH OF THE ROMANOVS IS CURRENTLY WORKING
ON SEVERAL PROJECTS TO HELP REFURBISH THE FAMILY'S IMAGE IN
RUSSIA. AMONG THEM IS A PROJECT TO REBUILD A CHURCH OUTSIDE ST.
PETERSBURG DESTROYED BY COMMUNISTS IN 1964. HE SAYS BELLS FOR
THE CHURCH STEEPLE ARE BEING CAST AT A PLANT IN HIS HOMETOWN,
CINCINNATI.
******