St Petersburg Times 12may98

Tsar's Funeral: Another Final Decision To Undo?

EDITORIAL St. Petersburg Times 12 May 1998

THE REMAINS of Nicholas II, his wife and three of his five children, are to be buried in St. Petersburg on July 17 with "full state honors."

That was the position President Boris Yeltsin endorsed in February as his government's "final decision" on the question of the remains a government commission determined to be those of Russia's last tsar and his family, executed by the Bolsheviks in 1917.

Events over the weekend made that decision look as frail as so many of the "final decisions" announced by the Kremlin in recent years.

One thing is clear - for now. If the funeral does go ahead as scheduled, it will not be carried out with full state honors. If the Russian head of state is absent, how many other dignitaries will decide against attending a funeral that the Orthodox Church refuses to fully sanction?

While the Orthodox Church's present and future role in Russian society is hard to judge, the funeral of the last ruler to style himself as the chosen protector of the Orthodox faith - chosen, according to then-prevailing dogma, by God - cannot be anything other than a hollow sham without the Church's full engagement in the process.

St. Petersburg will be able to count itself lucky if the tsar's funeral does not end up as empty and pathetic as Yeltsin's own inauguration as president in 1996, when his brief, robotic appearance turned an event - hyped beforehand as a triumphant moment for Russian democracy - into a tragic farce.

But this is the same president who had to order the bombing stopped in Chechnya numerous times before the armed forces - of which he is titular head - would actually stop the bombing in Chechnya.

St. Petersburg would have been foolish to expect the tsar's funeral to be anything other than the mish-mash it now looks likely to become - with Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov, the two halves of the surviving Romanov family, Yekaterinburg, City Hall, the church and God knows who else, squabbling about an occasion that should be a moment of national healing.

But then even moments that have traditionally been times for such healing are soured by government incompetence and stupidity. For example, City Hall continues to allow neo-Nazis and ultra-nationalists to march on Victory Day. The May 9 holiday is supposed to commemorate the former Soviet Union's victory over the Third Reich, a regime that subscribed to the same sort of philosophy as that espoused by the black-shirted, racist thugs that marched down Nevsky Prospect on Saturday - just a short distance behind the groups of heroes that survived Hitler's concentration camps and the 900-day siege of Leningrad.

While democracy means allowing almost any political creed a chance for expression, these people have no place in a march celebrating victory over Nazism.

Yeltsin and his ilk have continually tried to win hearts and minds by decree - witness the president's attempts to transform the anniversary of the October Revolution into a Day of National Reconciliation, or his campaign to have a committee research "the Russian ideal."

But ideals cannot be created by executive fiat, they must be lived. That is something that the veterans who marched Saturday know, but which Yeltsin will never understand.

President May Miss Burial of Last Tsar

By Alice Lagnado
STAFF WRITER
St. Petersburg Times, 12 May 1998

Plans to hold a solemn state funeral for Russia's last tsar this summer in St. Petersburg have been thrown into disarray with an announcement that President Boris Yeltsin and Patriarch Alexy II, the head of the Russian Orthodox Church, may not attend.

In addition to Yeltsin's and Alexy's possible refusal to attend the ceremony, the prospects for Nicholas II's funeral have been tarnished by statements from Moscow Mayor Yury Luzhkov questioning whether the funeral should go ahead at all.

Organizers are also locked in something of a battle with the government in Yekaterinburg - site of the tsar's murder by the Bolsheviks in 1917- where the remains are being stored.

While local officials decried Luzhkov's statement, they could not be reached for comment after the announcement concerning Yeltsin because of the Victory Day holidays.

Government spokesman Viktor Aksyuchits was quoted by Itar-Tass after a meeting between Yeltsin and the Patriarch on Friday as saying that representatives of the government, Orthodox Church and presidential administration would attend the July 17 funeral of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in St. Petersburg.

"However, in all probability, the president and the patriarch will not take part," he said.

Aksyuchits, an aide to Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov, who heads the governmental commission overseeing the burial, did not give any reason why the two might not attend.

The Orthodox Church has already expressed reservations about the authenticity of the bones, and a meeting of the Holy Synod in April failed to come to a decision about how to participate in the funeral, which is set to take place in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul.

In February, the Russian government made the decision to go ahead with the heavily symbolic funeral despite objections from the Church.

The issue of the identification of the bones is a key one, since the church is considering canonizing Nicholas II and his family. The church views the burial as temporary because an Orthodox saint's remains must be placed inside a specially consecrated tomb inside a church and above ground. Attending the ceremony where a possible saint's remains were interred in a normal way could therefore be unseemly for the head of the Orthodox church.

Yeltsin, who has been careful to court the powerful Orthodox Church in recent years, also paid a visit to Patriarch Alexy II on Friday, according to Reuters.

"I greet you as the Supreme Commander [of Russia's armed forces]," the patriarch told Yeltsin, who had earlier laid a wreath at Moscow's Tomb of the Unknown Soldier to commemorate Victory Day.

"And I greet you as the Supreme Commander of religious forces," Yeltsin joked in reply.

The news regarding the president and the patriarch came just one day after Moscow Mayor Luzhkov had weighed into the various controversies surrounding the funeral.

Luzhkov issued a statement urging the government to reconsider its decision on the burial since there was "no complete certainty in [the bones'] identification," according to Interfax.

He said that many members of the government might refuse to take part in the ceremony due to their doubts regarding the remains' authenticity.

Luzhkov also suggested that the remains should be buried in a symbolic grave which would become a memorial to the victims of "the period of religious repression and Red Terror in Russia," according to Itar-Tass.

His comments were greeted with skepticism both here and in Moscow.

"The sharp Moscow mayor, having picked up on the mood of the [Holy] Synod, has tried, as befits an assiduous master, to turn the situation to his advantage," said a report in Kommersant Daily last Thursday.

The report said that, since St. Petersburg was chosen as the burial site for the tsar and not Moscow, Luzhkov is looking after Moscow's interests as well as keeping in favor with the powerful Orthodox Church: "Luzhkov, in disputing the conclusions of Nemtsov, is defending Moscow's interests and making yet one more curtsey to the Moscow Patriarchy."

Luzhkov has been perhaps even more careful than Yeltsin to court the church, in particular through his pet project, the massive Christ the Savior Cathedral which was completed last year.

"The reaction of the administration of St. Petersburg, of the government, and of many scholars and historians [to Luzhkov's statement] is very negative," said Ivan Artsishevsky, who sits on St. Petersburg's burial commission and is director of the Congress of Compatriots, an international organization representing Russians living abroad.

Meanwhile, a feud is brewing over the style of the funeral.

While the national and local government and members of the St. Petersburg burial commission have repeatedly stressed that the ceremony should be solemn and modest, government officials in the Urals city of Yekaterinburg have got other ideas.

The tsar's remains were found near the city, and plans envisage them being flown from there to St. Petersburg - not stopping at the tsar's former home, Pushkin, as was originally thought.

Nicholas II, his family and servants were executed by a Bolshevik firing squad in Yekaterinburg in July 1917, and nine skeletons were exhumed outside the city in 1991.

According to documents belonging to the city burial commission and shown to The St. Petersburg Times by local burial commission member Artsishevsky, Yekaterinburg officials have planned a grand ceremony to herald the transfer of the bones to St. Petersburg, with a large orchestra accompanying the send-off.

This is precisely what St. Petersburg officials have said they want to avoid.

To add insult to injury, Yekaterinburg has invited only three representatives of the Romanov dynasty to accompany the Tsar's remains - Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna Romanova, her husband Franz Hohenzollern and their son, Prince Georgy Hohenzollern-Romanov.

These three are all from one side of the surviving Romanov family, which is split over the identity of the rightful heir to the Russian throne and other dynastic matters.

Luzhkov's statements on the tsar's funeral were met with suspicion in St. Petersburg because they were made directly after a meeting with Grand Duchess Maria's mother - Grand Duchess Leonida Georgievna.

The Grand Duchess Leonida is determined to see her grandson, Prince Georgy, 16, recognized as heir apparent to the throne, but a different section of the family has said that his claim must be discounted, citing a decree from Nicholas II disinheriting Georgy's great-grandfather.

The other side in the dispute is led by Nikolai Romanov, head of the Union of the Members of the Romanov House, an organization that unites the 42 holders of the Romanov family name, who is also supported by the respected historian Dmitry Likhachyov.

Speaking in an interview at his home Friday, Artsishevsky said that Luzhkov had spoken with St. Petersburg Governor Vladimir Yakovlev on Friday, and that Luzhkov told Yakovlev that he knew that what he said was not what he really thought.

Artsishevsky also said that the Queen of England will definitely not attend the funeral, though Buckingham Palace could not confirm this on Monday.