Bones of Tsar Nicholas II Authenticated by DNA Testing

[Jovialis]

Fresh genetic tests on bones of Russia's last tsar and his family murdered a century ago have confirmed their authenticity, investigators said Monday.

The tests could be a step towards the Russian Orthodox Church finally recognising the bones and burying them with full rites.

Genetic tests ordered by the Church—which disputed earlier results—"confirmed the remains found belonged to the former Emperor Nicholas II, his family members and members of their entourage," said the Investigative Committee, which probes serious crime and has been roped in to resolve the long-running debate.

The tests involved exhuming Nicholas's father Alexander III, proving "they are father and son," investigators said.

The Orthodox Church said it would consider the findings and praised the way the investigation was going.

The Bolsheviks shot the abdicated tsar, his German-born wife and their five children along with their servants and doctor on the night from July 16 to 17, 1918, as they were living under guard in the Urals city of Sverdlovsk, now Yekaterinburg.

The killers then hastily buried the remains, first discovered in 1979.

The bones of Nicholas, his wife and three of their children were interred in Saint Petersburg in 1998 but the Orthodox Church refused to give them a full burial service, disputing their authenticity after an investigation under President Boris Yeltsin in which the clergy felt sidelined.

Amid popular legend that one of the children may have survived, several pretenders claimed later to be Anastasia, one of the tsar's daughters, but these were never proven.

The bones of the tsar's only son Alexei and his daughter Maria were found separately in 2007 and have never been buried.

The issue touches on sensitive religious issues since the Orthodox Church has canonised the ex-tsar and his family as martyrs, making their bones holy relics.

Yet the Church's reluctance puzzles secular figures since previous DNA testing was carried out by international experts.

Some had expected the Church to recognise the remains in time for a full burial ahead of the centenary.

Church spokesman Vladimir Legoida in a statement said it would study the latest findings "with attention" and praised the current investigation for its "atmosphere of openness."

The investigation is still ongoing and will include looking at historic documents.

Church leader Patriarch Kirill is to lead thousands in a procession on Monday night from the murder site to a monastery commemorating the victims.



Read more at: https://phys.org/news/2018-07-fresh-dna-authenticate-bones-russia.html#jCp

Tonight marks 100 years since their murder.

 

[Angela]

Tonight marks 100 years since their murder.

I have no idea what the Church is doing. It's been clear for a long time these are their remains. The two remaining siblings should also be buried with their family members. It's time to do the right thing.

I've been fascinated by this story since I saw the old movie "Anastasia" with Yul Brynner and Ingrid Bergman, about a woman we now know was a fake but claimed to be one of the Romanov sisters. (That's when my mad celebrity crush on Yul Brynner started. What a man!)

I'm far from the only one enthralled with the story: there's the Disney film and the Broadway Show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyUBdLm3s9U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRa-0hBdbQ

If the Communist leaders thought they'd erase the memory of this famiy they were sorely mistaken.

For anyone interested, this is a good two part documentary on the four murdered Russian princesses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHQWpcpJVM0

There's also a great book about the family called: Nicholas and Alexandra, by Robert Massie. A marriage for love by a King doesn't always turn out so well for his country. (I have to admit to rather detesting Alexandra.) Also beware of close cousin marriages.


It was an antiquated system and the Romanovs should have been deposed, especially given how feckless and intransigent the Czar was, and as we did with our own royal family, but this was just disgusting brutality. You exile deposed royal families, you don't butcher four young women and a very ill, hemophiliac little boy. All these years later, their fate still horrifies me. Well, what could you expect? Look at the millions and millions of Russians killed by the Communists. This was just at the very beginning.

 

[Jovialis]

I have no idea what the Church is doing. It's been clear for a long time these are their remains. The two remaining siblings should also be buried with their family members. It's time to do the right thing.

I've been fascinated by this story since I saw the old movie "Anastasia" with Yul Brynner and Ingrid Bergman, about a woman we now know was a fake but claimed to be one of the Romanov sisters. (That's when my mad celebrity crush on Yul Brynner started. What a man!)

I'm far from the only one enthralled with the story: there's the Disney film and the Broadway Show.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyUBdLm3s9U

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JtRa-0hBdbQ

If the Communist leaders thought they'd erase the memory of this famiy they were sorely mistaken.

For anyone interested, this is a good two part documentary on the four murdered Russian princesses:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VHQWpcpJVM0

There's also a great book about the family called: Nicholas and Alexandra, by Robert Massie. A marriage for love by a King doesn't always turn out so well for his country. (I have to admit to rather detesting Alexandra.) Also beware of close cousin marriages.


It was an antiquated system and the Romanovs should have been deposed, especially given how feckless and intransigent the Czar was, and as we did with our own royal family, but this was just disgusting brutality. You exile deposed royal families, you don't butcher four young women and a very ill, hemophiliac little boy. All these years later, their fate still horrifies me. Well, what could you expect? Look at the millions and millions of Russians killed by the Communists. This was just at the very beginning.

Indeed, the communists failed, because they inadvertently lionized Nicholas II and his family. Especially with the legend of Anastasia. My sister loved the Disney film of it. My mother was fascinated with the story as well.

According to this BBC article, the celebration of Nicholas II since his canonization has become an increasingly significant religious event for Russian Orthodox Christians. 200,000 pilgrims are expected to commemorate him tonight in the city of Ekaterinburg for the 100^th anniversary of the Romanov’s execution.

https://www.historyextra.com/period...ly-remembered-russia-tsars-days-ekaterinburg/

 

[Jovialis]

The article also has a link to a site that has documented over 4,000 photographs of Nicholas II with his family:

http://www.romanovs100.com/

 

[Ygorcs]

Does anyone really understand why and what on earth made the Russian Orthodox Church consider Nicholas a saint? His admittedly tragic and disturbing fate alone, martyrdom (but is a martyr eligible to sainthood when he wasn't killed because of his religious activities/values?)? I mean, not the real underlying reasons, but at least the reasons stated to justify that decision.

 

[Angela]

The article also has a link to a site that has documented over 4,000 photographs of Nicholas II with his family:

http://www.romanovs100.com/

Lovely young girls, and totally innocent of doing any harm. In a way I feel particularly sad about the older girls. They should have had their own lives by then, a husband and children, at least, since a modern female life was impossible, but their mother selfishly wouldn't let them go, and so they perished with her.

I can't say the same for the mother and father. Imo, Nicholas seems to have been personally a good man, undoubtedly devout, but not very bright, sadly misguided, indecisive and obdurate by turns, and totally controlled by his hysterical wife. In short, an absolute disaster as an absolute monarch, and, imo, a disaster for his country.

Clearly, they didn't ask me if he should be canonized. That's a separate issue and totally the business of the Russian Orthodox Church.

As I said, the Communists made a martyr out of him.

@Ygorcs,
It's clear that both Nicholas and ALexandra were exceptionally devout, and they both believed that God had placed "Nicky" on the throne. More importantly, as in England and other Protestant nations, the Czar was the head of the Church in a sense, but unlike in those countries, the Czar was no constitutional monarch, or titular head of the Church . Russia was in some ways a theocracy; they saw themselves as the "Third Rome". (This is very different from Roman Catholicism, where, after much struggle, the Papacy freed itself from the monarchs.) The Communists were, on the other hand, atheists, and determined to dismantle and eradicate Christianity in Russia. In taking down Nicholas, they were taking down the Orthodox Church at the same time. Their fates were intertwined.

This is how the Orthodox Church sees him:

"The modern "Western" mind tends to view history in a strictly political way. But with an Orthodox world view, history must be seen as the unfolding of the story of man's redemption through the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, His death on the cross for our sakes, and His Holy Resurrection. The rising and falling of nations, the development of culture?in short, all of history?can only be correctly analyzed in this context. With the murder of Tsar Nicholas, the Byzantine form of government, which places Christ at its head, ended, ushering in the present age of lawlessness, apostasy and confusion. His was a government in the tradition begun sixteen centuries earlier by St. Constantine the Great. That such an unthinkable tragedy as the Russian Revolution could take place attests to the truth of the scriptural warning that "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matthew 24:12). This pious Christian emperor was surrounded by people, even among his own relatives, whose self-centeredness and petty worldliness had obscured the love of God in their hearts to the point that they failed to unite around their sovereign in his time of need. They thereby cleared the way for the revolutionary element?the enemies of God?to despoil the Holy Russian Empire and place in its stead a satanocracy whose aim was the annihilation of the remembrance of God from the face of the earth."https://www.stjohnthebaptist.org.au/en/articles/way-nicholas.html

 

[Jovialis]

In 1981, Nicholas and his immediate family were recognised as martyred saints by the Russian Orthodox Church Outside Russia. On 14 August 2000, they were recognised by the synod of the Russian Orthodox Church. This time they were not named as martyrs, since their deaths did not result immediately from their Christian faith; instead, they were canonized as passion bearers. According to a statement by the Moscow synod, they were glorified as saints for the following reasons:


"In the last Orthodox Russian monarch and members of his family we see people who sincerely strove to incarnate in their lives the commands of the Gospel. In the suffering borne by the Royal Family in prison with humility, patience, and meekness, and in their martyrs' deaths in Yekaterinburg in the night of 17 July 1918 was revealed the light of the faith of Christ that conquers evil."


However, Nicholas's canonization was controversial. The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad was split on the issue back in 1981, some members suggesting that the emperor was a weak ruler and had failed to thwart the rise of the Bolsheviks. It was pointed out by one priest that martyrdom in the Russian Orthodox Church has nothing to do with the martyr's personal actions but is instead related to why he or she was killed.[134]


The Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia rejected the family's classification as martyrs because they were not killed on account of their religious faith. Religious leaders in both churches also had objections to canonising the Tsar's family because they perceived him as a weak emperor whose incompetence led to the revolution and the suffering of his people and made him partially responsible for his own murder and those of his wife, children and servants. For these opponents, the fact that the Tsar was, in private life, a kind man and a good husband and father or a leader who showed genuine concern for the peasantry did not override his poor governance of Russia.[134]


Despite the original opposition, the Russian Orthodox Church inside Russia ultimately recognised the family as "passion bearers," or people who met their deaths with Christian humility.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nicholas_II_of_Russia#Sainthood

In regards to his sainthood, I found this on the wikipedia page.

 

[Jovialis]

Lovely young girls, and totally innocent of doing any harm. In a way I feel particularly sad about the older girls. They should have had their own lives by then, a husband and children, at least, since a modern female life was impossible, but their mother selfishly wouldn't let them go, and so they perished with her.

I can't say the same for the mother and father. Nicholas seems to have been personally a good man, undoubtedly devout, but not very bright, sadly misguided, indecisive and obdurate by turns, and totally controlled by his hysterical wife. In short, an absolute disaster as an absolute monarch, and, imo, a disaster for his country.

Clearly, they didn't ask me if he should be canonized. That's a separate issue and totally the business of the Russian Orthodox Church.

As I said, the Communists made a martyr out of him.

It looks like a lot of people within the Russian Orthodox Church agree

 

[exceededminimumso..]

In regards to his sainthood, I found this on the wikipedia page.

"some members suggesting that the emperor was a weak ruler and had failed to thwart the rise of the Bolsheviks"

Weird argument, Tsar wasn't deposed by Bolsheviks

 

[Angela]

"The Russian Imperial Romanov family (Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) and all those who chose to accompany them into imprisonment—notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov—were shot, bayoneted and clubbed to death^[1] in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16-17 July 1918.^[2] The Tsar and his family were killed by several Bolshevik troops including Peter Ermakov, and led by Yakov Yurovsky under the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet and according to instructions by Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky. Their bodies were then stripped,^[3] mutilated,^[1] burned and disposed of in a field called Porosenkov Log in the Koptyaki forest.[4]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_the_Romanov_family

A recreation of the scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2tvmXxDvyc


It actually wasn't as "clean" as that. The girls and the Tsarevich were stabbed and clubbed to finish them off. The bodies were then dismembered and burned, and the bones then buried. What men do in the name of their idealistic slogans.

 

[Jovialis]

"The Russian ImperialRomanov family (Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Tsarina Alexandra and their five children Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei) and all those who chose to accompany them into imprisonment—notably Eugene Botkin, Anna Demidova, Alexei Trupp and Ivan Kharitonov—were shot, bayoneted and clubbed to death^[1] in Yekaterinburg on the night of 16-17 July 1918.^[2] The Tsar and his family were killed by several Bolshevik troops including Peter Ermakov, and led by Yakov Yurovsky under the orders of the Ural Regional Soviet and according to instructions by Lenin, Yakov Sverdlov and Felix Dzerzhinsky. Their bodies were then stripped,^[3] mutilated,^[1] burned and disposed of in a field called Porosenkov Log in the Koptyaki forest.[4]"

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Execution_of_the_Romanov_family

A recreation of the scene:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N2tvmXxDvyc


It actually wasn't as "clean" as that. The girls and the Tsarevich were stabbed and clubbed to finish them off. The bodies were then dismembered and burned, and the bones then buried. What men do in the name of their idealistic slogans.

That sounds exceptionally brutal. It is sad to see their faces, and think that is what became of them. I think nowadays, people take political extremism lightly, as it disturbingly becomes normalized in media, and society becomes more tribalized. But it is capable of producing monsters that would commit horrific acts of cruelty, even to innocent women and children. This is also one of the most repugnant aspects of Marxism, and communism; it removes human agency from whole sections of society.

 

[Ygorcs]

But it is capable of producing monsters that would commit horrific acts of cruelty, even to innocent women and children. This is also one of the most repugnant aspects of Marxism, and communism; it removes human agency from whole sections of society.

That's a problem that, despite the huge variety of systems of thought (leftist or rightist, religious or secular etc.), seems inherent to all manifestations of extreme collectivism/tribalism, whereby people become numbers/statistics or generic labels (regardless of the term given to the dehumanized groups of individuals: "pagans", "infidels", "capitalists", "bourgeois" etc. A sense of community and of group identity is important and useful, but taken to the extremes and given some kind of "high purpose" that starts to be taken too seriously it seems to inevitably lead to an increasingly violent social polarization and lumping all opposing sides into one shapeless, unhuman "entity" that needs to be annihilated (and it's easier to do so when you convince people that they aren't individuals and that they are completely unlike "us, the right ones"). I'm always very wary of any over-the-top enthusiasm about some kind of imaginary or real collective identity.

 

[Ygorcs]

Lovely young girls, and totally innocent of doing any harm. In a way I feel particularly sad about the older girls. They should have had their own lives by then, a husband and children, at least, since a modern female life was impossible, but their mother selfishly wouldn't let them go, and so they perished with her.

I can't say the same for the mother and father. Imo, Nicholas seems to have been personally a good man, undoubtedly devout, but not very bright, sadly misguided, indecisive and obdurate by turns, and totally controlled by his hysterical wife. In short, an absolute disaster as an absolute monarch, and, imo, a disaster for his country.

Clearly, they didn't ask me if he should be canonized. That's a separate issue and totally the business of the Russian Orthodox Church.

As I said, the Communists made a martyr out of him.

@Ygorcs,
It's clear that both Nicholas and ALexandra were exceptionally devout, and they both believed that God had placed "Nicky" on the throne. More importantly, as in England and other Protestant nations, the Czar was the head of the Church in a sense, but unlike in those countries, the Czar was no constitutional monarch, or titular head of the Church . Russia was in some ways a theocracy; they saw themselves as the "Third Rome". (This is very different from Roman Catholicism, where, after much struggle, the Papacy freed itself from the monarchs.) The Communists were, on the other hand, atheists, and determined to dismantle and eradicate Christianity in Russia. In taking down Nicholas, they were taking down the Orthodox Church at the same time. Their fates were intertwined.

This is how the Orthodox Church sees him:

"The modern "Western" mind tends to view history in a strictly political way. But with an Orthodox world view, history must be seen as the unfolding of the story of man's redemption through the Incarnation of our Lord Jesus Christ, His death on the cross for our sakes, and His Holy Resurrection. The rising and falling of nations, the development of culture?in short, all of history?can only be correctly analyzed in this context. With the murder of Tsar Nicholas, the Byzantine form of government, which places Christ at its head, ended, ushering in the present age of lawlessness, apostasy and confusion. His was a government in the tradition begun sixteen centuries earlier by St. Constantine the Great. That such an unthinkable tragedy as the Russian Revolution could take place attests to the truth of the scriptural warning that "because iniquity shall abound, the love of many shall wax cold" (Matthew 24:12). This pious Christian emperor was surrounded by people, even among his own relatives, whose self-centeredness and petty worldliness had obscured the love of God in their hearts to the point that they failed to unite around their sovereign in his time of need. They thereby cleared the way for the revolutionary element?the enemies of God?to despoil the Holy Russian Empire and place in its stead a satanocracy whose aim was the annihilation of the remembrance of God from the face of the earth."https://www.stjohnthebaptist.org.au/en/articles/way-nicholas.html

Thank you very much, Angela. I still think it's a bit of a stretch to hold someone as a saint basically because when he was deposed and murdered the "satanocracy" took his place. I mean, it's not like his ruling and the political system he represented had nothing to do with that disaster for his country and his own family. If he had died directly because he defended the Christian faith I'd get that, but at best his death was only very indirectly related to the communists' atheism.

 

[Angela]

Thank you very much, Angela. I still think it's a bit of a stretch to hold someone as a saint basically because when he was deposed and murdered the "satanocracy" took his place. I mean, it's not like his ruling and the political system he represented had nothing to do with that disaster for his country and his own family. If he had died directly because he defended the Christian faith I'd get that, but at best his death was only very indirectly related to the communists' atheism.

Well, the Church in Russia is also divided on the issue, as Jovialis pointed out. They've in effect reversed their prior decision to canonize Nicholas and Alexandra as martyrs to the faith, and have instead canonized them as what they call "passion bearers", which seems to mean as people who embody the Christian virtues in their personal lives, and who bear their suffering with humility and acceptance.

I'm not as conversant with Eastern Orthodox Catholicism as I am with Roman Catholicism, but this seems to be very similar to what in the Roman Church is called proof of "heroic virtue" in the candidate: "heroic virtue of the Servant of God; that is, that the Servant of God exercised to a heroic degree the theological virtues of faith, hope, and charity and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance."

That is, the candidate has to be, if not a martyr, a Confessor, in that they have borne "witness to the Faith by how they lived".
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canonization

Whether the Czar and Czarina met those standards isn't for me to say. I'll just opine that one could possess "heroic virtue" and be absolutely hopeless as a king or war leader, both of which he was required to be.

In the Roman Catholic church in the modern era proof of miracles attributed to them is also required, one for Beatification and two for Canonization, although I think the number may be back down to one.

I don't know, as I say, the specifics of the Russian Orthodox standards.

Fwiw, lots of saints in the Roman Catholic canon, too, whom some people, even within the Church itself, think shouldn't be there, like St. Christopher, who, after a lot of research, they decided probably didn't actually exist and so removed him. I still see people with St. Christopher medals, however.

Different standards of proof were applied at different times, and opinions have differed and differ even today.

I mean no disrespect to either Church by my comments; just trying to clarify what has happened.

 

[exceededminimumso..]

The Russian Orthodox Church and the Curse of the Mongol Yoke
https://www.imrussia.org/index.php?...&catid=56:society-a-trends&Itemid=103&lang=en

 

[exceededminimumso..]

Anyway, treatment or religion in Soviet Union changed quite a lot as Stalin was strengthening his grip on power. While Lenin/Bolsheviks strived to eradicate religion, Stalin/Soviets used it to control people almost like in "Holy" Russian Empire* Nothing really changed from those days. You can see same shift in architecture, from avant-gardish constructivism to "Socialist clasicism" and other arts


*At least it was Russian and Empire, unlike some other holy empires

 

[LABERIA]

Anyway, treatment or religion in Soviet Union changed quite a lot as Stalin was strengthening his grip on power. While Lenin/Bolsheviks strived to eradicate religion, Stalin/Soviets used it to control people almost like in "Holy" Russian Empire* Nothing really changed from those days. You can see same shift in architecture, from avant-gardish constructivism to "Socialist clasicism" and other arts


*At least it was Russian and Empire, unlike some other holy empires

I agree with you. I want to add only that Stalin changed his attitude towards the Russian Orthodox Church when the Soviet Union was attacked by Germany.

 

[Angela]

Stalin: The Master Manipulator

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perse...oviet_Union#Anti-religious_campaign_1928–1941

 

[Sonnenburg]

Jealousy is a lousy guidance especially on the road paved with good intentions leading to ‘hell on earth’.
French Revolt was a ‘guiding light’ for Russian Bolsheviks including the Guillotine and Red Terror.
Slogans of Equality, Fraternity and Liberty usually end with Equalization, Fraternization and Liberalization of Extremists of any kind...and then it’s time for ‘Napoleons’: Josef Stalin, who shot the Old Bolsheviks; Adolf Hitler, who closed down the Rotten Weimar Republik; Vladimir Putin, who’s reinventing Russian Pride...Trump is making America Again after Obama downgraded it to a Weimar Republik...
[FONT=&quot]”There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
[/FONT][FONT=&quot]Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.”[/FONT][FONT=&quot]
[/FONT]Hamlet Act 1, scene 5, 159–167