Faint signals spell return of the tsar

Weak signals usually go unnoticed by the great public and by most experts. But they indicate events somewhere below the surface and can be harbingers of big changes. Take the recent announcement (24 August) by the chief Russian prosecutor that he planned to reopen the case of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia, and his entire family on 17 July 1918.

Russian archaeologists recently found bones near Yekaterinburg which they believe are the remains of Prince Alexei and Princess Maria, whose bones had been missing.

The Romanov family were disinterrred in 1991 and buried on 1 July 1998 in St Catherine’s Chapel, in Peter and Paul Fortress, St Petersburg. Present at the funeral was the then president Boris Yeltsin, who in his communist days was the boss of the local party in Yekaterinburg. The funeral took place exactly 80 years after the murders.

Then in 2000 the Russian Orthodox Church decided to canonise the whole Romanov family. Last year another significant funeral took place in the very same chapel. The remains of Empress Maria Feodorovna, mother of Nicholas II, who died in 1928, were brought from Roskilde Cathedral outside Copenhagen to have their final, belated rest in the blessed soil of Russia next to her husband Alexander III.

Following the collapse of the USSR there have been several competing claims to the tsarist heritage. Nicholas Romanovich Romanov, prince of Russia, who was born in 1922 in the Antibes, has headed the Romanov family since 1992.

His grandson Grand Duke George Mihajlovich, born in 1981, would theoretically be the rightful next tsar.

Or so he claims. So does Maria Vladimirovna Romanova, the Grand Duchess of Russia, born in 1953, living in Spain but now a Russian citizen. The British throne is another career option for her, but at number 109 in line there, Russia looks a more promising option.

What this quiet cacophony of faint signals suggest is that Russia is poised to bring back the glory days of tsarist splendour. It is not hard to picture the rapacious ‘oligarchs’ who plundered the old USSR as the powdered, bemedalled courtiers of a new tsar. The Russian royal family would have no problems outshining the Windsors, for a start, and probably most of the other royal families.

And what a pleasant relief for the Kremlin not to bother with elections, however laughably easy they are to win. The puppet ruler, solemnly guided by the Orthodox Church, would lead the Russian masses in the required direction.

Weak signals usually go unnoticed by the great public and by most experts. But they indicate events somewhere below the surface and can be harbingers of big changes. Take the recent announcement (24 August) by the chief Russian prosecutor that he planned to reopen the case of the murder of Tsar Nicholas II, the last emperor of Russia, and his entire family on 17 July 1918.

• Primary Source