1st Requiem for Monarch Slain in 1918 : Soviets Ignore Police to Eulogize Czar
MOSCOW — About 200 people gathered among the damp weeds in a monastery graveyard today to hold the first public Requiem in the Soviet Union for Czar Nicholas II, who was shot by Bolshevik guards in 1918.
Police using loudspeakers repeatedly ordered participants to leave the unofficial prayer meeting in Moscow’s Donskoi Monastery, but the warnings only made the worshipers sing their Russian Orthodox hymns louder.
“You’re a Russian too. You should understand,” one woman shouted at a policeman.
Organizers said the service reflected a recent resurgence of monarchism among Soviets who have less fear of persecution and arrest for their views.
A brass band stumbled through “God Save the Czar,” and Orthodox priests who conducted the service eulogized the czar and his murdered family as “real Russian martyrs.”
In July, 1918, soldiers acting on Bolshevik orders shot Nicholas and 10 members of his entourage, including his wife and five children.
The unofficial Commission on the Remains of the Russian Imperial Family is calling for the remains of the royal family to be given Christian burials in the Peter and Paul Fortress in Leningrad, the traditional resting place for the Romanov family.
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