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One of the more scurrilous stories going about in recent days is that the killing of Tsar St Nikolai and his family was a “Jewish Ritual Murder”. I kid you not! Firstly, Ya M Yurovsky wasn’t a practising Jew. How could he carry out a “Jewish” act if he wasn’t part of the “Tribe”? Some sources detail that he dallied with Lutheran Christianity before becoming a Marxist. In short, those making such accusations know more about Judaism than Yurovsky probably did. He came from a non-religious Jewish family in Tomsk, in Siberia, far from the usual venues of Jewish community life. Today, this goofy submission mainly comes from one Tikhon Shevkunov, a Far Right cleric with political and oligarch connections. He embarrassed HH by bringing this fantasy up at a serious legal and historical forum at the Centre. HH didn’t take long to react. He “promoted” Shevkunov… he made him a metropolitan in charge of a minor metropolia that only covers Pskov Oblast. Pskov Oblast is a backwater that’s been in decline for many decades. HH had to determine the depth of Shevkunov’s real support amongst the siloviki*, and when he concluded that Shevkunov wasn’t as powerful as he seemed, he kicked Shevkunov out of the Centre. The Church rejects the “Jewish Ritual Murder” submission as anti-Semitic rubbish, unfit for Christian people. Yes… there are anti-Semites amongst us pushing this noisome theory… many in the ROCOR, of old White Guard families. A priest told me that this idiocy has become a “litmus test”, so many people who seemingly support it, don’t… they simply don’t want trouble with the elements who foster such nonsense.
- silovik: “person of power”, an “operator” or “person of influence”… generally used of those in the political or military apparat
Secondly, V I Lenin and the VTsIK didn’t order the deaths of the imperial family and their retainers. According to the testimony of three telegraphists from the Yekaterinburg post office received later by Sokolov’s commission, Lenin in conversation with Berzin on direct wire ordered:
Take under your protection the whole royal family and don’t allow any kind of violence against them. If such occurs, you’ll forfeit your own life.
According to historian A G Latyshev, the telegraph communication between Lenin and Berzin is one of the proofs of Lenin’s desire to save the life of the Romanovs. Latyshev believes that Lenin, unwilling to spoil relations with German Kaiser Wilhelm, a close relative of the Romanovs, didn’t approve the shooting. If we proceed from the available documents, the fate of the royal family as a whole wasn’t discussed at any level in Moscow. The only discussions were on the fate of Nikolai, and most prefered to have a trial. According to a number of historians, there was a fundamental consensus that the former monarch was to receive a death sentence. According to investigator V N Solovyov, F I Goloshchekin, referring to the complexity of the military situation around Yekaterinburg and the possibility of the capture of the royal family by the Whites, proposed shooting Nikolai without a trial, but the VTsIK categorically denied this option. The Ural Soviet sent a telegram received in Moscow on 16 July at 21.22. G Z Ioffe suggested that the “justice” referred to in the telegram referred to the execution of Nikolai or even of the whole family. There’s no answer from the central leadership to this telegram in the archives. Indeed, Archpriest V A Chaplin, some years ago, confirmed that the VTsIK sent no telegram ordering the family’s death. A few hours before the shooting of the royal family, on 16 July, Lenin prepared a telegram as a reply to a Danish newspaper that asked him about the fate of Nikolai, which denied rumours of his death. At 16.00, the text went to the telegraph office, but the telegram wasn’t sent. According to Latyshev:
This means that Lenin didn’t even imagine the possibility of the execution of Nikolai (not to mention the whole family) the next night.
According to the RF Genprokuratura, the official decision to shoot Nikolai came on 16 July 1918 from the Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet of Workers, Peasants, and Soldiers Deputies. No one preserved the original document of this decision. However, a week after the shooting, the Ural Soviet published the official text of the sentence:
Decree of the Presidium of the Ural Regional Council of Workers, Peasants and Red Army Deputies
In view of the fact that Czechoslovak gangs threatened the capital of the Red Urals, Yekaterinburg, in view of the fact that the crowned executioner might escape the people’s justice (a White Guard conspiracy was just discovered, aimed at kidnapping the entire Romanov family), the Presidium of the regional committee, in fulfillment of the will of the people, decided to shoot the former Tsar Nikolai Romanov, guilty before the people of countless bloody crimes. The decree of the Presidium of the Regional Soviet was carried out on the night of 16-17 July. The Romanov family was transferred from Yekaterinburg to another, more secure place.
The Presidium of the Regional Soviet of Workers, Peasants, and Red Army Deputies of the Urals
Genprokuratura investigator V N Solovyov, who conducted a criminal investigation into the death of the royal family, examined the memoirs of those personally involved in the shooting, as well as the testimony of other former Ipatiev House guards, concluding that their descriptions of the shooting didn’t contradict each other, differing only in small details. He didn’t find any documents that directly proved the involvement of Lenin and Sverdlov. However, if he thought that Lenin and Sverdlov accepted the shooting of the royal family, he said:
I believe, of course, they did. On 18 July 1918, having learned that the whole family had been shot, they officially accepted the execution, punishing none of the organisers and participants in the shooting.
Meanwhile, Latyshev noted that the Presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee, under the chairmanship of Sverdlov, approved (recognised as correct) the decision of the Uralbolsovet about the execution of Nikolai II. However, the Sovnarkom, headed by Lenin, only “took note of it”.
Solovyov completely rejected the “Jewish Ritual Murder” thesis. He pointed up that most of the participants in the discussion of the shooting were Russians, only one Jew (Yurovsky) took part in the murder, and the rest were Russians and Latvians. The investigation also disproved the version advanced by M K Diterikh about “chopping off heads” for ritual purposes. According to the conclusion of forensic medical experts, the cervical vertebrae of all skeletons show no traces of post-mortem separation of the heads. In October 2011, Solovyov decided to end the investigation. The official conclusion indicated that the investigation didn’t find documentary evidence of the involvement of Lenin or anyone else from the top leadership of the Bolsheviks in the shooting of the royal family.
In short, the shooting was a panicked decision by the local authorities. The Whites were on the doorstep, so to speak, so they decided to put an end to the family, to avoid their liberation by the Whites. It wasn’t a “foreign killing” nor was it a “Jewish murder”… the facts simply don’t support such moonshine. Besides, many of those pushing such nonsense today are those who whitewash fascist collaborators such as Vlasov and Krasnov. You can see that their anti-Semitism, although not identical to that of the Nazis, was similar enough to it so that they were comfortable with collaboration with the German fascist persecutors of the Rodina. Does it surprise you that most of them went to work for the USA after the end of the VOV?
The Church considers the royal family “Passionbearers”, those who met their fate in a Christian fashion, NOT “martyrs”, as they didn’t die in defence of Christianity. As for me, I believe it a great historical tragedy, one that we besmirch by bringing in such nonsense as “Ritual Murder”. Let them rest in peace. The Romanov dynasty died with them… the actual chance of a “restoration” is next to nil. Let history and the Almighty see and judge.
BMD
Voices from Russia 
Christmas: A Celebration of Light, Family, Peace, Love, and Joy
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To His Holiness Kirill
Patriarch of Moscow and all the Russias
Dear friends and comrades, my brothers and sisters!
From the Pacific Ocean to the icebound White Sea, our entire state is ready to celebrate Christmas… a beloved traditional holiday, the first in the new 2019. I’d like the feeling of joy, togetherness, and love to last for the whole coming year. Traditionally, we celebrate Christmas with the people most dear and close to us… our parents, children, grandchildren, workmates, friends, colleagues, and those with whom we share our joys and trials. However, according to ancient tradition, our thoughts turn these days to those treated badly by life, those who even on these joyful days are cold, hungry, uncomfortable, and anxious, and to those who vigilantly carry out their duty to protect the Motherland, to those who look after our health and safety. Mercy and gratitude figure largely in the Russian national character, in Russian people, in all those who live on our blessed land. Therefore, first of all, I want to give Christmas greetings to our servicemen, border guards, police, rescue workers, doctors, and volunteers, as well as to all those sick, weak, afflicted, orphaned, and homeless.
On this bright holiday, we look back as we gather around the festive table as if starting a new beginning in life. We evaluate our achievements; we blame ourselves for our errors, we make wishes, we give each other gifts, and we make plans for the coming year. On such days, we more than ever feel the unity of the past and the future. We can particularly clearly feel during the Christmas holidays the unity and interdependence of the world, of peoples, of countries, and of continents. Today, it’s more and more obvious that the formula of the “end of history” is fallen. The West actively imposed this on us immediately after the destruction of the USSR, when it seemed to many in the West that they defeated the ideals of social equality. Current events show that it isn’t so, history hasn’t reached a conclusion. The struggle for the interests of the working people, for justice, which is trampled upon by self-lovers, exploiters, and rapists, is only growing. The confrontation between labour and capital, between rich and poor, is growing, becoming ever more acute and spilling over into open protests of the disadvantaged. We give them our sympathy and special support during these Christmas days.
Our great state is now a target for continuous attacks by its traditional opponents and detractors. A siege is coming for our country, when the base of the “approach” is almost along its entire perimeter… not only to intimidate us but also for possible aggression. The goal is to grasp the gigantic resources of Russia, to take our open spaces connecting East and West. They want to make our people forget their dignity and great history. We, as heirs of a mighty state and its glorious past, are particularly concerned about the process of alienation of the fraternal Ukraine from the Russian Federation, which they are trying to strike at the very heart, to knock out the canonical Orthodox Church, which is the support of the people. When the new government banned the activities of the Communist Party of the Ukraine in 2015, when they subjected its headquarters, newspapers, and offices to pogroms, when they defamed its leaders and activists, we warned that the process of destruction wouldn’t stop there. Indeed, such happened. In the Ukraine, not only do we see a revival of Nazi madness, but also a dangerous church schism, conceived far from the Dnieper and implemented with Byzantine cunning and American-English perfidy.
The schismatics don’t heed the words of the Fathers:
They don’t hear the witness of Orthodoxy:
They don’t attend to the sayings of righteous elders:
In these hard times, we wish steadfastness for all Orthodox, not only those in the fraternal Ukraine. We all need to be firm and faithful. We hope that the cup of trials and torment would pass us by. We hope that the lava of bitterness won’t cover the Ukrainian land and that a hopeless “St Bartholomew’s Night” wouldn’t fall on it. We still believe that we can admonish the misguided, sober those intoxicated with anger, to reach out to our disoriented brethren, addressing them with the message of the poem Slavs by Fyodor Tyutchyov:
Finally, we wish our beloved Russia to overcome inertia and embark on creative transformations in the interests of the majority, without imitating others, without the camouflage of showy festivities. It’s very important for us to return to the main achievements of the Soviet period… affordable education for all, truly free healthcare, and high-quality social security. The past year dealt a severe blow to whole generations of our citizens, who now have to work even longer, rolling up their sleeves in order to receive their expected and deserved reward from the state in the form of pensions. It’s become ever clearer to those able to see and hear that the course imposed on our country is a course going nowhere. As promised, we’ll continue to strive to achieve the creation of a socially responsible government focused on the national interests of the country, which would take care of the workers, overcome poverty and corruption, and wouldn’t serve the oligarchic clans who illegally appropriated gigantic resources for themselves. We can and should invest the national wealth in science, education, culture, and sports… in real modernisation, not its ostentatious imitation.
The quality of any policy is determined by the welfare and well-being of our people, by their life expectancy and education, and by its respect for our country and people. To realise our national interests, we need new objectives, another way of thinking, and a new socio-political culture. In this Christmas holiday season, the KPRF and other popular patriotic forces once again affirm that we’d actively struggle with all the situations facing our people, for the creation of social justice, to implant a creative and honest moral-political situation in the country and in the authorities. We must turn away from the course of destruction and return to the path of goodness and creativity. Otherwise, we’d spiral finally into the funnel of the crisis.
My dear compatriots, I greet all of you on the holiday, I hope that together we’d be able to prevent adversity and protect our fellow citizens, as we see in the All-Night Vigil:
I believe that every malice and pride in everyday life, despondency, and negligence in our hearts will come to an end, and love, humanity and brotherly love would strengthen them.
С Праздником! С Рождеством Христовым!
To the feast! To the Nativity of Christ!
6 January 2019
Head of the KPRF faction in the RF Gosduma
Chairman of the TsK KPRF
KPRF.ru
KPRF official website
https://kprf.ru/party-live/cknews/181627.html?fbclid=IwAR2o3HmR-bT1T649Q9O3tAmHFznylGgJTCKsvzMMlvi72ILvS3sdpB7YNK4