Russian Court Rehabilitates Last Czar

The history major in me is coming out and I found this story from the New York Times interesting. Having read published diaries of both Nicholas and Alexandra, they obviously were not cut out for the position of absolute monarchs, but were they truly bad people? I do not believe so. They were simply way over their heads, a situation which was aggravated by Alexis' hemophilia which was kept secret and only caused their actions to look all the more bizarre at times. Obviously, their children ere innocents - like so many thousands who died under the brutality of the Bolsheviks and Soviets. Here are some highlights:

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MOSCOW — Russia’s Supreme Court on Wednesday ruled in favor of full rehabilitation for Russia’s last czar, Nicholas II, and his family, officially recognizing the executed royals as victims of Soviet repression 90 years after their deaths. The ruling brings Russia closer than ever to public reconciliation with the execution, one of the most significant events in a bloody revolutionary period that led to more than 70 years of Soviet rule.

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Nicholas II and the monarchy were reviled in official Soviet history. But since the fall of the Soviet Union they have increasingly come to be seen as important, if not positive, elements of Russia’s past. . . . . “This decision shows the supremacy of law and the victory of justice over evil and tyranny," said German Lukyanov, the lawyer for Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, a descendant of the czar who first filed a suit for the rehabilitation of her family three years ago.

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In July 1918, under Lenin’s orders, the czar, his wife, Aleksandra, and their children, Olga, Tatyana, Maria, Anastasia and the 13-year-old heir to the throne, Aleksei, were shot to death in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains in central Russia. The killings by the fledgling Bolshevik government were meant to solidify its hold on power in the midst of an intensifying civil war.

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Other members of the royal family had been rehabilitated previously. In 1999, four Romanov princes killed by the Bolsheviks, including the son of Aleksandr II — the Russian czar blown up by revolutionaries in 1881 — were found innocent of criminal wrong-doing.

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The Russian Orthodox Church, which canonized the Romanovs as martyrs in 2000 and was itself subject to massive persecution by the Bolsheviks, welcomed Wednesday’s decision. "It is an important step to remove from our history the heavy burden of this crime against the czar’s family," said Father Vsevolod Chaplin, a spokesman for the Church.