Russia’s last czar ruled victim of repression

MOSCOW – The last czar and his family were victims of political repression, Russia’s Supreme Court ruled Wednesday, formally restoring the Romanov name and furthering a Kremlin effort to encourage patriotism by celebrating the country’s czarist past.

Nicholas II, his wife and five children were shot to death by a Bolshevik firing squad in 1918, a year after the revolution that led to the creation of the Soviet Union.

For years, their descendants have sought rehabilitation in the courts, claiming the executions were political repression. The argument was repeatedly denied until Wednesday when the country’s highest court issued the final word, siding with the family.

According to critics, earlier rulings reflected Vladimir Putin’s reluctance to condemn the Soviet government’s crimes, in part to justify his own retreat from democracy.

But in recent years, Putin and his successor as president, Dmitry Medvedev, have evoked the majesty of the czarist era in Kremlin ceremonies. And they have given a place of prominence to the Russian Orthodox Church, which has canonized Nicholas II and his family.

At the same time, Putin, now prime minister, and Medvedev also have continued to glorify the Soviet Union’s achievements and celebrate the symbols of its power.

Oleg Orlov, a member of the human rights group Memorial, said the aim was to give Russians pride in their country by emphasizing the positive aspects of their history while glossing over the bad.

“In Russia, the tendency has been to say … the czar was a good guy, Lenin was a good guy, Stalin was a good guy, the Bolsheviks weren’t that bad,” Orlov said.

“The authorities are always right,” he said. “What they’re telling people now is ‘we have a great history and therefore we have a great country.’ ”

Wednesday’s decision to “rehabilitate” the slain Romanovs won’t change the minds of many Russians today. While Russian Orthodox believers share the church’s veneration of the family as saints, die-hard communists see them as criminals and millions of other Russians place them somewhere in between.

But it is a step in the direction of condemnation of the Bolsheviks who killed the family and, by extension, of the entire Soviet era. And it is likely to put the Romanov family in a more positive light for coming generations of Russians.

Nikolai Romanov, a distant relative of the last czar, said the whole rehabilitation process was ridiculous.

“It’s as if you suddenly thought that it was necessary to rehabilitate St. Peter or St. Paul because the Romans had judged them and sentenced them to death,” he said on NTV television.