All About The Romanovs

Russia still ambivalent on imperial heritage - Telegraph

History man: images from Vladykin’s book show Anatoly Gomzikov and the cross he erected where the Romanovs were killed Photo: Alexei Vladykin

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By Alexander Morozov, Special to RBTH

7:55PM BST 05 Sep 2013

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How do modern Russians view the royal legacy and the last tsar, Nicholas II? Public attitudes have undergone several shifts since the collapse of the Soviet Union two decades ago, with the most recent studies showing an increase in appreciation of the monarch.

A poll of 1,600 Russians, carried out in July by Moscow’s Levada Centre, found 48pc viewed Nicholas II positively.

He still trailed Soviet-era leader Leonid Brezhnev as Russia’s most popular 20th-century head of state, and was marginally behind Lenin and Stalin, but ranked far more highly than either Boris Yeltsin, independent Russia’s first president, or Mikhail Gorbachev, the last Soviet leader, who polled 22pc and 21pc respectively. Nicholas also had the lowest negative rating.

The consecration of the Church on the Blood

Fighting over history

Russian historians were recently asked to develop a cohesive – or as President Vladimir Putin put it “consistent” – history of Russia for use in school textbooks. How Nicholas’s rule will be judged is not yet clear. Consequently, the 400th anniversary of the founding of the House of Romanov is being celebrated quietly, without a major cultural or official programme. At the same time, the Kremlin has opted for prominent commemorations of another jubilee, the centenary next year of the start of the First World War.

Russia has yet to reconcile fully with its past and its history is still a battlefield. But perceptions of the last tsar already look different to those found in a survey in 1994 that asked which past leader could be regarded as a true Russian patriot. Only 5pc of respondents chose Nicholas II, who did not even make the top 10.

Public assessments immediately after perestroika focused mainly on the human fate of Nicholas and his family, with people seeing in this tragedy a harbinger of the entire subsequent history of Soviet repression and mercilessness, even toward children. There was no great interest in his rule. His image as a melancholy and politically weak leader went unchallenged.

Royals in the news

As the Nineties progressed, Nicholas took on new meaning. Society became more divided after Yeltsin’s election to a second term in 1996 as hopes dissolved for rapid integration with the West following the collapse of Communism. The tsar became an important symbol for the conservative opposition, who regarded him as a sacred figure protecting the Russian people and their faith from a godless Western civilisation.

Nicholas’s political actions were interpreted within the framework of a global fight to preserve the only true Christianity, the belief in Russia as the “Third Rome”.

The royal family were discussed in the press throughout the Nineties after Yeltsin formed a commission in 1993 to identify their bodies. The commission operated for five years, and numerous arguments and assessments were silenced only by a ceremonial government burial of the remains in 1998. A part of the public continued to challenge the authenticity of the remains despite the commission’s verdict, an issue that remains unresolved.

For Yeltsin, Nicholas’s fate and historical image had a personal aspect. He was a Communist party official in Sverdlovsk (Yekaterinburg) when the decision was made to destroy the building, Ipatyev House, in which the royal family was shot. Although the site of the building has since been turned into a Romanov shrine by Anatoly Gomzikov, Nicholas became a less emotive topic after Mr Putin’s rise to the presidency in 2000.

A 2002 meeting in Kiev to remember the Tsar’s family

The president inherited a fractured society from Mr Yeltsin and tried in his first term to put a symbolic end to the long Russian “civil war” of the 20th century by reconciling the “Whites” and the “Reds”. On one hand, he restored the old Soviet anthem; on the other, he associated with author Alexander Solzhenitsyn, who had monarchical leanings, and reburied in Moscow’s Danilov Monastery the remains of White generals who had died in exile.

Politics and memory

After 2005, the Kremlin sought to assemble a pantheon of symbols of Russian greatness. In it were placed medieval military commander Alexander Nevsky; Stalin; Lenin; cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin; the most popular Russian saint, Seraphim of Sarov; and Second World War hero Marshal Zhukov. Nicholas II was also in this pantheon. The attempt to give a more cohesive, patriotic account of the past turned out to be more successful than during the Yeltsin era.

But reaching this point was costly. In the second half of the decade there were many TV discussions on the greatness of Stalin and his generals. Nicholas II – as the last emperor, as the symbol of a special understanding of Russian power – does not now stand out from other Russian rulers as a controversial figure, despite the tragic circumstances of his demise.

Discussion in Russia’s media focuses more on the victory in the Second World War and the role Stalin played in it than the economic progress made during Nicholas’s reign.

Russia remains deeply divided over the consequences of the overthrow of the tsar. For 70 years, Nicholas and the idea of monarchy was seen in terms of class hatred. The Soviet collapse brought a resurgence of feeling for tradition among more conservative social groups, but little demand for restoration.

Public appreciation of Nicholas may continue to increase over time, but the reign of the last monarch marks a definite break in Russia’s history.

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