Centenery of the Tsar's Death

Tue, Jan 15th 2019 at 9:53 am - 9:53 am

Immediate Past President David Gilchrist gave a fascinating presentation to club members following his visit to Russia July. The photo shows The Church on the Blood - the site of the executions

The Church on the Blood (site of the executions)

Centenary of the Tsar’s Death

Immediate Past President David Gilchrist gave a fascinating presentation to members of the South Foreland Rotary Club based on his visit to Russia this July to mark the centenary of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.

David began by giving an idea of the divided opinions about the Tsar.  To the Soviet Union he was ‘Bloody Nicholas’, an incompetent and arrogant ruler, but to the Russian Orthodox Church and his family he was a good ruler and true Christian who wanted the best for Russia and desired peace rather than war.  He and his family have now been canonised as ‘Passion bearers’ and martyrs.

In 1894 he married Princess Alexandra of Hesse and by 1904 they had four daughters and a son.  Alexandra was devoted to her children and to her country, working as an Auxiliary Nurse in a Military Hospital in World War 1.  When civil unrest in Petrograd led to riots in 1917 the Tsar abdicated, seeing this as the only way to save his country.  He was imprisoned with his family, and by April 2018 they had been moved to the ominously named ‘House of Special Purpose’ in Ekateringburg, where they lived for 70 days.

On the fateful night of 16th July1918 the family and retainers were woken at midnight on the pretence of being moved, but were taken to a basement room where they were sentenced to death without a trial and were executed in cold blood, including the five children.  This appalling killing by the Bolshevik soldiers was to herald a descent into evil that would culminate in Stalin’s murderous purges some 20 years later.  David visited Butovo on the southern perimeter of Moscow where 20,000 victims of the purges were killed.  Locals believed Butovo to be a military shooting range but the horror of its true purpose did not emerge until the 1990s; the site has been given to the Church and is now a centre of pilgrimage and memorial.

David joined 6 friends in Ekateringburg in the Urals for the ‘Tsar’s days’, commemorating the centenary of the murders of the Imperial family.  The highlight of this was a midnight communion service on July 16th outside the Church on the Blood (the site of the executions), celebrated by the Patriarch of Moscow with a congregation of 100,000.  This was followed by a 14 mile ‘cross procession’ to the place where the bodies were dumped in a forest.  This was an amazing and moving experience.  It was not just a commemoration of the Tsar and his family but of all the victims of the communist purges in a period which has been described as ‘Russia’s Golgotha’.

 

 

 

 

 

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