The debate over Australia’s constitutional future is not something which comes from the people, but a small elite.
For much of the twentieth century another republican elite, funded by Soviet Communists, plotted to make Australia a republic. This was to be based on the East European and Soviet model.
As we reported in our last column on the brutal murder of the Imperial Family by the same Soviet communists, and on the direct orders of Lenin, there are those apologists even today who say this terrible crime was worth it .
But as Oleg Gordievsky, a former Colonel of the KGB, wrote and we repeat because it should never be forgotten:
“Russia under Nicholas II, with all the survivals of feudalism, had opposition political parties, independent trade unions and newspapers, a rather radical parliament and a modern legal system. Its agriculture was on the level of the USA, with industry rapidly approaching the Western European level.
“[In contrast] in the USSR there was total tyranny, no political liberties and practically no human rights. Its economy was not viable; agriculture was destroyed. The terror against the population reached a scope unprecedented in [human] history.
“No wonder many Russians look back at Tsarist Russia as a paradise lost.”
….Commemoration in Russia and abroad, including Australia…
In Australia to honour the martyrdom of the Russian Imperial Family, His Eminence Metropolitan Hilarion, First Hierarch of the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia, presided over an All Night Vigil and Divine Liturgy at the Russian Orthodox Cathedral of Saint Peter and Saint Paul in Sydney.
The martyrdom was also remembered in a midnight Liturgy in the newly built Cathedral erected in honour of the Martyrs on the site of the demolished Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg.
His Holiness Patriarch Alexey of Moscow and All Russia presided in the presence of dozens of Russian Orthodox metropolitans, archbishops, and bishops, some hundreds of clergy and tens of thousands of pilgrims from all over the Russian lands and abroad.
According to Father Joachim to the Melbourne based Monarchist Alliance, a delegation from the Australian Russian Orthodox community was among those attending.
In his Epistle, “On the 90th Anniversary of the Murder of the Holy Royal Passion-Bearers,” ( posted on the website of The Russian Orthodox Church overseas and the Monarchist Alliance), His Holiness said:
“The decades of our history which were marred by the sufferings of war, internecine strife, starvation and indescribable, massive repressions were in many ways determined by the moral failings rooted in the abandonment of the eternal truths revealed to us by God.
“I would hope that the period of militant atheism and its consequent sufferings have forever receded into the past.
“One sees signs of this in the spiritual image of our times: society is returning to the unchanging values of faith, Orthodox churches are springing up everywhere, and the land of the Urals, soaked in the blood of the innocent Martyrs, is today visited by tens of thousands of pilgrims streaming in from throughout Russia and from abroad to prostrate themselves before the podvig of the Holy Royal Passion-bearers.
“The Memorial Church-on-the-Blood of All Saints of Russia, erected on the site of the murder of the Royal Family, has already become a symbol of the renascence of our Fatherland in repentance, truth, love and devotion to God, a symbol of the reestablishment of historical memory and of the resurrection of Holy Russia.”
…Links with the Australian Crown…
Father Joachim points out that the body of HRH PRincess Andrew of Greece, the mother of HRH Prince Philip, is buried in the crypt of the Russian Orthodox Monastery of St Mary Magadalene on the Mount of Olives at Gethsemane in Jerusalem.
This is also the crypt that housed the body of her Aunt Grand Duchess Elizabeth before she was canonized as a Saint of the Orthodox Church and her relics enshrined in the monastery church.
He also writes that before the State Wedding of HRH the Princess Elizabeth to HRH Prince Philip in Westminster Abbey, a private Orthodox wedding ceremony was celebrated at Buckingham Palace.
He says that within the last few years HRH Prince Philip has been received back into the Orthodox Faith by a member of the Greek Orthodox clergy in London. Prince Philip has been a frequent visitor to Mount Athos and a benefactor to a number of monasteries there.
As well, Prince Charles, Prince of Wales, often makes private retreats at an Athonite monastery and has frequent contact with the Orthodox clergy.