The Moscow
spokesman for the Imperial House of Romanov announced at a press conference
Friday that members of the Russian imperial family want to live in Russia
again, Gazeta.ru reports. Once residing in their ancestral homeland once more
they will help in the restoration of civil society and the development of legal
institutions.
“The Imperial House is the bearer of the monarchist idea,
but it is not attempting to impose it on anyone,” Alexander Zakatov, director
of the chancellery of the Russian Imperial House stated. “But to return to its
country, to live and work here, to participate in cultural, philanthropic
programs and other nonpolitical events that serve to reinforce civil society,
the development of legal institutions of state, the return of traditions – in
that sense, the imperial house should and can and wants to work, and we are
certain that it will be that way in the future.”
The modern Romanovs are descendants of the last tzar’s
sister, Grand Duchess Xenia Alexandrovna, or of earlier tzars. Tzar Nicholas II
and members of his family were executed in 1918 after the October Revolution.
The Imperial House of Romanov is led by Grand Duchess Maria
Vladimirovna, a descendant of Tzar Nicholas II’s grandfather. She now lives in Spain
and France. The
heads of seven other Romanov “dynasties” formed the Romanov Family Association
in 1979. That organization holds that the Russian people should choose its form
of government and, should it be monarchic, the people should also choose the
tzar from the family members. Maria Vladimirovna is not a member of the RFA.
After years of lobbying by the House of Romanov, the royal
family was politically rehabilitated by the presidium of the Russian Supreme
Court in October 2008. In Russia,
political rehabilitation is the acknowledgment that a past criminal sentence
was politically motivated (that is, it was political repression) and not the
result of criminal activity. Other Romanov family members who were killed separately
by the Bolsheviks in 1918 were rehabilitated this year.
The tzar, his wife and children were canonized by the
Russian Orthodox Church outside Russia
in 1981 and by the Russian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate in 2000. The
royal remains were found in 1998 and 2007 and now rest in the Peter and Paul
Cathedral in St. Petersburg.
