President Boris Yeltsin (1931-2007) bowing before the relics of the imperial family in 1998
Moscow, 27 November 2008 (Interfax):
Sergei Firsov, a Doctor of historical sciences and a professor at St Petersburg State University said it was providential that the Church did not recognise the remains found not far from Yekaterinburg in early 1990s as those of the imperial family. “The second burial site was found not far from the first one. If the Church had recognised the authenticity of the remains in the nineties, then, it would have built a church there and we would have never found the second burial site”, he said during a broadcast on the Grad Petrov internet-radio site. He said, “It is possible to see good in this, even if it is coincidental”. Professor Firsov wrote the preface to the book The Imperial Passionbearers: Their Posthumous Fate (Царственные страстотерпцы. Посмертная судьба) by the historian Natalia Rozanova.
Fragmentary human remains with signs of a violent end of two individuals were found in July 2007, on Old Koptyakovo Road near Yekaterinburg. According to the preliminary data, the remains found were of a boy of 10-14 years-of-age and a young woman of about 20-years-old. At present, the accepted version concerning these remains is that they are of Tsarevich Aleksei Nikolaevich and Grand Princess Maria Nikolaevna, shot by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Earlier, the remains of Tsar Nikolai II, the other members of the imperial family, and their retinue were discovered buried near the Old Koptyakovo Road in July 1991. Expert analyses conducted as part of a criminal case pursued by the Office of the RF Procurator General confirmed that the remains were those of the imperial family and their retainers. The remains were buried at the Ss Peter and Paul Cathedral in St Petersburg on 17 July 1998.
Interfax-Religion
http://www.interfax-religion.ru/?act=news&div=27504 (in Russian)
Editor’s Note:
Hey, Interfax translator! This is Wally the Big Green Monster and he’s coming after you!
Firstly, its… yes, it is, friends and neighbours… BIG GREEN WEENIE AWARD time again. The Interfax translator left out half of the text. For shame! Interfax is paying this dolt (or dolts, as the case may be) for doing NOTHING. God, that’s a hustle… gotta give ‘em credit for crassness and brass, if nothing else. They must think that no one is going to check on them!
As for the Church not accepting the remains in 1998, I think that it is generally well-known today that the main reason for not doing so was not to queer relations with the ROCOR. It may come out in future that this was a clever ploy suggested by Metropolitan (then, Archbishop) Laurus Skurla to tide things over until the senescent Metropolitan Vitaly Ustinov retired or died (he had to be booted out, albeit it was called a “resignation” publicly). Now, that the reconciliation is a given fact, look for the Church to change its tack and right smartly.
