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Prayers,
controversy to mark Russian tsar commemorations
Orthodox faithful and surviving royals are expected to flock
this week to commemorate last tsar Nicholas II and his family, whose slaying 90
years ago still touches a nerve in post-Soviet Russia.
From Sunday the city of Yekaterinburg in the Ural Mountains
will echo to the sound of choirs, bell-ringing and prayers as the faithful
recall the murders that sealed the fall of a centuries-old dynasty and its
replacement by the Soviet Union.
Church officials said ceremonies would culminate on Thursday
at the spot where on July 17, 1918, Bolshevik agents shot Nicholas, his wife,
their five children, three servants and a doctor.
"If in the past, and in the Soviet period especially,
people voiced pride that here, in Yekaterinburg, we killed the tsar, now it's
the opposite," Archbishop Vikenty of Yekaterinburg told a local newspaper
last month, reflecting on changed attitudes and the Church's revived role.
"People realize it was a tragedy," he told the
newspaper, Yekaterinburgskaya Initsiativa.
A church on the site of the "special purpose
house," as it was called by the Bolsheviks, provides the backdrop for this
week's commemorations. The original building was pulled down in 1977 by local
party boss Boris Yeltsin, later Russia's first post-Soviet leader.
After an all-night vigil, pilgrims will process
18-kilometers (11-miles) to a disused mine where the bodies were first dumped,
before they were later retrieved, doused in acid and reburied at another site
for more effective concealment.
More commemorations take place the next night in the town of
Alapayevsk, 150 kilometers (95 miles) to the north, on the anniversary of the
killing there of six more royals plus their servants.
Joining the commemorations will be a Romanov descendant,
Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who lives in Madrid and claims to be
Nicholas' rightful heir.
Reflecting continued sensitivities, she last week lodged two
new court appeals in a long-running battle to get formal state recognition that
her ancestors were victims of political repression and not of a random attack.
The refusal to "rehabilitate" the Romanovs
suggests "some political forces want to maintain elements of the Communist
regime, the worst elements," said an aide to Maria Vladimirovna, Alexander
Zakatov, insisting that expressions of regret by post-Soviet leaders such as
Yeltsin were not enough.
Meanwhile another branch of the family, the Romanov Family
Association, said on its website it would mark the anniversary not in
Yekaterinburg but in Saint Petersburg.
The choice reflects split opinion over the reburial 10 years
ago in Saint Petersburg of remains dug up in 1991 and thought to be of
Nicholas, his wife, three of the children and the royal servants and doctor.
While DNA tests confirmed their authenticity, both the
Orthodox Church and Maria Vladimirovna refused to accept the evidence as
foolproof, amid doubts over which of the five children were dug up and whether
one, Anastasiya, might have survived.
Russian officials now claim all doubts have been settled
after the discovery last summer of two more sets of remains, said after testing
to be irrefutably those of Nicholas' son and heir Alexei and daughter Maria.
With significant numbers of Orthodox priests keen to restore
the monarchy, the Romanovs' fate remains highly sensitive and the role of the
Church a delicate one, said religions expert Sergei Filatov, of the Russian
Academy of Sciences.
Noting the virtual "cult" that has grown up around
Nicholas in Yekaterinburg, he said the Church as a whole "behaves very
carefully, so monarchist ideas are not so publicly declared."
The head of respected Russian human rights organisation
Memorial criticised the Church, saying it had failed to draw the right lessons
from the horrors of 1918, particularly as it rejected the notion of universal
human rights.
"It's important to preserve this memory but also to
draw conclusions relevant to today and tomorrow," said Memorial's
chairman, Arseny Roginsky.
"We respect the Church's position but such
commemorations are inadequate," he said.
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