From: vadim@thnext.SLAC.Stanford.EDU (Vadim Kaplunovsky)
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet
Subject: Re: On the deaths of the Romanov family ...
Date: 23 Jul 92 06:26:15 GMT

In article <920722150937.20405844@Sdsc.Edu> grant%9296.span@SDSC.EDU writes:
> 
> >From:         "VALENTINE M. SMITH" <CDELL@UMKCVAX1.BITNET>
> >
> >A set of comments stemming from postings on ORTHODOX and RUSSIA that
> >I hope could extend to further conversations on other lists.
> >
> >Nicholas Romanov perished 74 years ago the night of the 16th. On
> >ORTHODOX and RUSSIA, I saw him, his wife Alexandra and the five
> >children extolled as martyr/saints on that anniversary. I think this
> >belief to be in error. Martyrs yes, saints no.
> >
[The rest of the article, as well as most of the McLellan's response
deleted in the interests of brevity.]
> 
> It is evident that you do not like Nicholas II.  I am not
> going to suggest that you adopt him as a political hero.
> Yet there is no evidence that he was less than a devout
> and believing son of the Orthodox Church, a devoted hus-
> band and father, and the victim of a brutal and anti-
> Christian, even theomachistic regime.  There is much in
> his life, and more in the way he left it, for Orthodox
> to honor.  By his holy prayers may we be saved, and may
> the Russian land be strengthened and cleansed.
> 
> Joseph McLellan

I have no reason to dispute that Nikolai II was a devout Ortxodox christian,
a good husband and father to his family and a victim of an
extremely brutal regime. For the argument's sake, I'll agree that by
the standards of an ordinary human being, his sins were not too great
(stupidity, narrow-mindedness and anti-semitism were not as deplored in his
age as they are now).  I can even agree that his children were martyrs,
for they were murdered for no fault of their own. (Although millions
of their father's subjects who were also murdered by the same bloody regime
are usually not considered martyrs.) But the idea that Nikolai II was a
goddamn saint makes me puke.

Now, I'm not a christian, let alone Orthodox, and I cannot possibly
argue as to what exactly makes a murder victim a holy martyr or a saint.
I simply do not buy the presumption that his execution was murder.

Among 20 million people killed in the great carnage of the Russian Civil
War,  Nikolai Romanov the second was the only person whose violent death
was his just desert.  Now, this does not means that the last czar's
executioners were anything but a bunch of bloody murderes.  Nikolai II did
not deserve to die for the crimes they charged him with, if indeed they even
bothered charging him with specific crimes; their "revolutionary justice"
followed no recognized court procedure.  No, his crime, his mortal sin
was not a sin of an ordinary man but a sin of a monarch.
AN ABSOLUTE MONARCH HAS ABSOLUTE RESPONSIBILITY FOR THE FATE OF HIS COUNTRY;
there are no excuses.  NIKOLAI II BROUGHT HIS EMPIRE TO AN UTTER RUIN,
and for a God-anointed absolite monarch there is no greater sin.

Millions of Russians perished in WWI, many more millions in the Civil War
that followed and tens of millions of human lives were destroyed by
the communist regime that arose from the ashes of the Russian Empire,
and to all those murdered millions it mattered very little that the cause
of this holocaust was mere incompetence and stupidity of the last czar
rather then any evil intent on his part.  Their blood is on his worthless
soul, and equally worthless are prayers in his name.  They would not
even speed up a pizza delivery, let alone deliver Russia from its current
evil.

If you think prayers might help Russia, pray to God by whatever name you
know him/her/it, pray to Jesus, Allah, Krishna, Lady Luck or whatever
deity you happen to believe in.  But don't waste your prayers by addressing
them to the last Russian czar -- he didn't save his country when he could,
and he is not going to do it now.

--
******************************************************************
Vadim Kaplunovsky,		| vadim@bolvan.ph.utexas.edu
Assistant Professor of Physics,	| Currently posting as
University of Texas at Austin	| vadim@thnext.slac.stanford.edu
Newsgroups: talk.politics.soviet