Has the Russian state finally repudiated the crimes of Bolshevism? The Russian Supreme Court has finally overruled its earlier refusal and acknowledged the reponsibility of the communist government in the brutal murder of Tasr Nicholas II, and his wife the Tsaritsa Alexandra Feodorovna, their children the Tsarevitch Alexei and the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia.
With their doctor and three servants, the Imperial Family were murdered at Yekaterinburg early in the early in the morning of 17 July, 1918 on the direct orders of the communist dictator, Vladimir Ilyitch Lenin.
As long as the remains of Lenin are honoured in the Mausoleum in the centre of Moscow, the final repudiation by the Russian state of the crimes of Bolshevism is still to be made.
Those crimes included not only the murders at Yekaterinburg, but the deaths of millions, and the enslavement of whole peoples within the communist empire.The Court’s decision is translated as a “rehabilitation.”
That blood curdling term came to be used in the fifties whenever a communist regime found it politically convenient to declare that some earlier show trials and executions were what everyone knew, the state sanctioned torture and murder of the losing faction in some internecine struggle for power.
The Russian government sought to make amends for the crime at Yekaterinburg on 17 July, 1998.
In a moving ceremony the remains of the Tsar, Tsarina and the Grand Duchesses were interred in the great Fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul in the city of St. Petersberg.The Imperial Family were subsequently canonised by the Russian Orthodox Church.
On 23 August 23, 2007, a Russian archaeologist discovered two burned, partial skeletons near Yekaterinburg. On 30April 30, 2008, Russian forensic scientists said that DNA testing demonstrated the remains belong to the Tsarevitch Alexei and one of his sisters.
…..President Yeltsin bows before the Tsar of All the Russias…..
At the interment in 1998, the then Russian President Boris Yeltsin bowed his head before the coffin of the Tsar Nicholas II.
In an act of great courage and deep personal and national contrition, the President had solemnly declared before Russia and the world that all the Russian people must atone for this "monstrous crime."
Russia, he said, had to end its "century of blood and lawlessness" with repentance and reconciliation.
"We all bear responsibility for the historical memory of the nation. That is why I could not fail to come here. I had to be here as both an individual and the president."
Condemning himself, as Communist Party chief at Yekaterinburg, where on direct orders from Moscow, he had supervised the destruction of the house where the imperial family was executed to prevent it becoming a monarchist shrine – he declared:
"Guilty are those who committed this heinous crime and those who have been justifying it for decades – all of us.
“We must not lie to ourselves, explaining this senseless cruelty with political goals."
"This is our historic chance, “he said. “On the eve of the third millennium we must do it for the sake of our generation and those to come. Let us remember those innocent victims who have fallen to hatred and violence.”
“May they rest in peace….”