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Letter #35, 2018: An end... and a beginning[2018-07-16][Engleză]Monday, July 16, 2018"We have absolutely no news from outside."The final entry in the diary of Tsar Nicholas II, on July 13, 1918. On the night of July 16-17, 1918, he, his wife and his five children were executed. The execution occurred exactly 100 years ago tonight, at about 2:30 a.m. on July 18 "We have not forgotten them." One of hundreds of Russian Orthodox pilgrims today in Ekaterinburg to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the death of the Romanovs. I spoke with the pilgrim in the courtyard of the Church on the Blood, built above the spot where the execution occurred ====================== Forgetting and Remembering Today, the day of the much-discussed Trump-Putin meeting in Helsinki, is the 16th of July, the 100th anniversary of the last day of the Romanovs. And so, amid the tectonic changes of global politics, the tragic fate of the Romanov family -- and not only of the Romanovs, but of all those caught up in the brutal machinery of revolution and political strife -- casts its long shadow down to this day. During the last days and hours of their lives, in July 1918, the Romanovs were entirely cut off from the world. It must have seemed to them that they had been forgotten. The leaders of a 300-year-old dynasty in a great empire had been imprisoned and kept incommunicado by their captors for many weeks. Then, they were awakened after midnight, brought to a basement room, and executed. Ten decades have passed. Russia became the Soviet Union, countess churches were dynamited or turned into latrines, the concept of the human soul changed. The world changed. Modes of communication, ways of governing, customs of nations... Then the Soviet Union became Russia again, in the time of John Paul II, and Gorbachev. And yet, through these years, there has remained a sense that the brutal murder of the Romanovs represents an act of barbarity that, as all such acts, must be remembered in order not to be repeated. And it is being remembered, in great solemnity, in Ekaterinburg, in these days. Yesterday I drove to Alapayevsk, a little village two hours from Ekaterinburg, where the sister of Czarina Alexandra, Elizabeth Federovna, now St. Elizabeth in the Russian Orthodox Church, was executed on July 18, 1918, by being thrown down a mine-shaft. I stood, for the first time, by that mine shaft, under tall evergreens. Then I was privileged to be invited within the church nearby for a liturgy celebrated by the Russian Orthodox Patriarch of Moscow, Kirill. Many of the descendants of the Romanovs were present, standing near to me. The beautiful liturgy, which was written by St. John Chrysostom and is used not only by the Orthodox, but also by Eastern-rite Catholics, lasted nearly three hours. The intense heat in the small crowded church drew perspiration from all of us. My clothing was soaked with sweat. At about two hours, feeling faint and swaying a bit, I thought, "I cannot make it," but still I managed to continue to the end. After the liturgy, I was invited to a lunch, where I had the chance to speak briefly with Kirill, who knew I was a Catholic because we spent a week together at a conference in Vienna in 2006. "When we pray together, we show our unity," Kirill said. He knew I had just attended the liturgy. Today, I attended Vespers in the Church on the Blood, and tonight at midnight I plan to be present at the liturgy commemorating the exact hour of the executions, on the exact spot where they occurred. I was struck today by a poem that is also a prayer that I read it in the church (see image above). Four doves and small swan were flying in the sky the Romanovs, the four daughters and the son. They died in part as a result of the sins of Russia, it said. But, it continued, the five, and all those devoted to their memory, pray to God that their killers may be forgiven. The forgiveness of sins is the great question. We know that the effects of sins unfold in a seemingly endless chain of consequences, "unto the third and fourth generation," as scripture says, and we know that once a sin has been committed, it cannot be uncommitted, so the chain of evil consequences seems inevitable, ineluctable, unchangeable, predestined. We know that the Romanov dynasty was not without sin, and that the Romanovs were unable to bring complete justice despite their notional absolute power. Nor did their executioners, the Soviet Communists, manage to bring justice. After executing the Romanovs, they executed many more, in a spiral of passionate purges that led to rivers of blood. So what value can there be in forgiving sins, in forgiving the executioners of the Romanovs, if the consequences of those sins unfold in any case? It can only be that the soul itself has a value, hidden from our sight, and that that value is absolute. It can only be that, despite the extension in time of the consequences of sin, of further sorrow and misery beyond the imaginations of those who commit sins, there is a value in returning to that first moment, that first betrayal, that first bite of the apple, and, though the consequences cannot be undone, nevertheless, heal that first departure from the path of justice and goodness. The healing is of a spiritual nature. It occurs in eternity, not in time. But perhaps even in time there can be in such a healing of sinful souls an effect that unleashes its own chain of ineluctable consequences, not for evil and cruelly, but for good, and kindness. Tonight, after the liturgy, retracing the events of that night 100 years ago, there will be a five-hour walk, from 3 a.m. to 8 a.m., from the church to the countryside outside of Ekaterinburg, where the corpses of the Romanovs were brought that night, and partially buried, in haste. We plan to make that walk... =================== Below is an article from March 1928, 10 years after 1918, published in The Atlantic magazine by Edmund Walsh. Though historical research has changed some of the details of the history recounted, it remains a useful and fascinating account of what happened to the Romanovs. Though it is long, it seems worth sharing. The Last Days of the Romanovs By Edmund Walsh The Atlantic, March 1928 issue I. The reasons for the summary and unexpected transference of the ex-Tsar and his family to Siberia, entailing, as it did, fatal consequences that are now part of history, were explained by Mr. Kerensky to the ex-Emperor with careful precision, and have been similarly repeated to this day by apologists of the régime responsible for it. It was due, the Premier insisted, to the concern felt by the Provisional Government for the physical safety of the prisoners. The Cabinet had decided to suppress with a firm hand the increasing disorder in the country and come to grips with the growing challenge of Bolshevism. Such a step would very probably lead to popular rioting, which, in turn, would have to be met with armed force; should serious strife ensue, the royal family would be among the first victims demanded by the mob. He had experienced one such manifestation already. At Moscow, as early as March 20, extremists had interrupted Kerensky during his first speech in that city and demanded the execution of the Tsar. Kerensky had shouted in reply: 'I will not be the Marat of the Russian Revolution!' One abortive attempt, moreover, had actually been made to kidnap the Tsar and imprison him in the Russian Bastille, the fortress of St. Peter and St. Paul. A certain Maslovsky, a Social Revolutionary of the Left, had presented himself one day, in the uniform of a colonel, to Khobylinsky, the responsible officer in charge of the Summer Palace, and presented an order requiring the Commandant to deliver up Nicholas Romanov. The document purported to be issued by the Executive Committee of Workmen and Soldiers, bore an authentic seal, and was signed by Tcheidze, a member in good standing of the Duma. Maslovsky declared that he was empowered to conduct the Emperor immediately to St. Peter and St. Paul. Khobylinsky refused to acknowledge such authority; Maslovsky lost his head, stormed about, poured abuse on Khobylinsky, and threatened vaguely that blood would flow. But Khobylinsky held his ground and Maslovsky made off in a rage. Those who have ever seen two Russians of the revolutionary period, each armed with class-consciousness and a 'mandate' arguing their respective rights and jurisdiction, will readily visualize this scene at the gate of the Summer Palace. With a view to averting similar dangers in the uncertain future, Mr. Kerensky had dispatched two confidential agents, Verchinin and Makaroy, to Siberia for the purpose of selecting a spot sufficiently remote from Moscow where the prisoners would not be exposed to the threat of mob violence. They chose Tobolsk, a town of twelve thousand inhabitants, on the right bank of the River Irtysh, near the mouth of the Tobol, some two thousand miles from Petrograd. It was a tranquil spot, undisturbed by the revolution; then, too, it boasted a comfortable Governor's Palace which had been prepared for the ex-Tsar and his family. But why, asks Nicholas Sokolov, the judge who conducted the judicial inquiry into the circumstances of the murder, did not Mr Kerensky send the family to South Russiato the Crimea, for example, where so many royalists had found safe refuge? If Mr. Kerensky was sincere in his protestations of concern for the safety of his charges, why did he not send them to the one region from which escape to a foreign land was still possible? All the relatives of the imperial family who reached the Crimea were eventually saved. Mr. Kerensky replies that a voyage through the heart of Russia, then in the hands of revolting peasants and Bolshevist workmen, was impossible. But was not a journey by rail and water from Petrograd to Tobolsk equally perilous, counters Judge Sokolov. No, answers Mr. Kerensky: the regions to the east were not aflame with revolution and peasant uprisings as was South Russia. Judge Sokolov is not satisfied, and his final report indicates that there was but 'one reason for the choice of Siberiathe dethroned Autocrat of All the Russias must be made to taste the bitterness and dreariness of exile in Siberia, must be made to experience the icy blasts of that House of Dead Souls to which he and his ancestors had banished so many Russians! Sursa: www.InsideTheVatican.com Contor Accesări: 724, Ultimul acces: 2026-08-02 15:14:56
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