NICHOLAS II Abdication Manifesto
ABDICATION MANIFESTO OF TSAR NICHOLAS II
By the grace of God, we, Nicholas II, Emperor of all the Russias, Tsar of Poland, Grand Duke of Finland, etc., etc., to all our faithful subjects make known:
In these days of terrible struggle against the foreign enemy who The destinies of Russia, the honour of Our heroic army, the welfare of the nation and the whole future of our dear country require that the war shall be continued, cost what it may, to a victorious end.
Our cruel enemy is making his final effort and the day is at hand when our brave army, with the help of our glorious allies, will overthrow him once and for all.
At this moment, a moment so decisive for existence of Russia. Our conscience bids Us to facilitate the closest union of Our subjects and the organization of all their forces for the speedy attainment of victory.
Saturday, December 20, 2008
Tuesday, December 2, 2008
Alexei Romanov remains verified
Posted on Thu, May. 1, 2008
Mystery no more: DNA links bones to czar's children
By Mike Eckel
Associated Press
MOSCOW - For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners gunned down Czar Nicholas II and his family, there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia's throne.
Some said the delicate 13-year-old had survived and escaped; others believed his bones were lost in Russia's vastness, buried in secret amid fear and chaos as the country lurched into civil war.
Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery, identifying bone shards found in a forest as those of Alexei and one of his sisters, Grand Duchess Maria.
The remains of their parents - Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra - and three siblings, including the czar's youngest daughter, Anastasia, were unearthed in 1991 and reburied in the imperial resting place in St. Petersburg. The Russian Orthodox Church made all seven family members saints in 2000.
Despite the earlier discoveries and ceremonies, the absence of Alexei's and Maria's remains had gnawed at descendants of the Romanov dynasty, history buffs and royalists. Even if yesterday's announcement is confirmed and widely accepted, many descendants are unlikely to be fully assuaged; they seek formal "rehabilitation" by the government.
"The tragedy of the czar's family will only end when the family is declared victims of political repression," said German Lukyanov, a lawyer for royal descendants.
Nicholas abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, and he and his family were detained. They were shot by a firing squad July 17, 1918, in the basement of the Yekaterinburg house where they were being held.
Rumors persisted that some of the family had escaped. Claims by women to be Anastasia were particularly prominent, although there were also pretenders to Alexei's and Maria's identities.
"It was 99.9 percent clear they had all been killed; now with these shards, it's 100 percent," said Nadia Kizenko, a Russian scholar at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Researchers unearthed the bone shards last summer in a forest near Yekaterinburg and enlisted Russian and U.S. labs to conduct DNA tests.
Eduard Rossel, governor of the region 900 miles east of Moscow, said tests by a U.S. lab had identified the shards as those of Alexei and Maria.
He did not specify the lab, but a genetic research team working at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has been involved in the process. Evgeny Rogaev, head of the team that tested the remains in Moscow and at the school in Worcester, Mass., was called into the case by the Russian Federation Prosecutor's Office.
He told the Associated Press yesterday that he had delivered the results to Russian authorities but said it was up to the prosecutor's office - not him or his team - to disclose the findings.
The test results were based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material passed down only from mothers to children.
It was unclear whether the Russian Orthodox Church would recognize the results as genuine. The church's press service said no one could comment on yesterday's announcement.
Mystery no more: DNA links bones to czar's children
By Mike Eckel
Associated Press
MOSCOW - For nine decades after Bolshevik executioners gunned down Czar Nicholas II and his family, there were no traces of the remains of Crown Prince Alexei, the hemophiliac heir to Russia's throne.
Some said the delicate 13-year-old had survived and escaped; others believed his bones were lost in Russia's vastness, buried in secret amid fear and chaos as the country lurched into civil war.
Now an official says DNA tests have solved the mystery, identifying bone shards found in a forest as those of Alexei and one of his sisters, Grand Duchess Maria.
The remains of their parents - Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra - and three siblings, including the czar's youngest daughter, Anastasia, were unearthed in 1991 and reburied in the imperial resting place in St. Petersburg. The Russian Orthodox Church made all seven family members saints in 2000.
Despite the earlier discoveries and ceremonies, the absence of Alexei's and Maria's remains had gnawed at descendants of the Romanov dynasty, history buffs and royalists. Even if yesterday's announcement is confirmed and widely accepted, many descendants are unlikely to be fully assuaged; they seek formal "rehabilitation" by the government.
"The tragedy of the czar's family will only end when the family is declared victims of political repression," said German Lukyanov, a lawyer for royal descendants.
Nicholas abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, and he and his family were detained. They were shot by a firing squad July 17, 1918, in the basement of the Yekaterinburg house where they were being held.
Rumors persisted that some of the family had escaped. Claims by women to be Anastasia were particularly prominent, although there were also pretenders to Alexei's and Maria's identities.
"It was 99.9 percent clear they had all been killed; now with these shards, it's 100 percent," said Nadia Kizenko, a Russian scholar at the University at Albany, State University of New York.
Researchers unearthed the bone shards last summer in a forest near Yekaterinburg and enlisted Russian and U.S. labs to conduct DNA tests.
Eduard Rossel, governor of the region 900 miles east of Moscow, said tests by a U.S. lab had identified the shards as those of Alexei and Maria.
He did not specify the lab, but a genetic research team working at the University of Massachusetts Medical School has been involved in the process. Evgeny Rogaev, head of the team that tested the remains in Moscow and at the school in Worcester, Mass., was called into the case by the Russian Federation Prosecutor's Office.
He told the Associated Press yesterday that he had delivered the results to Russian authorities but said it was up to the prosecutor's office - not him or his team - to disclose the findings.
The test results were based on analysis of mitochondrial DNA, the genetic material passed down only from mothers to children.
It was unclear whether the Russian Orthodox Church would recognize the results as genuine. The church's press service said no one could comment on yesterday's announcement.
Friday, November 28, 2008
Experts May Have Found Remains of Czar’s Children
August 25 2007
Alexei Vladykin/Associated Pres
A cross in Yekaterinburg marks where two bodies — maybe those of Aleksei and a sister — were found.
An archaeologist in Yekaterinburg, the city where the royal Romanov family was imprisoned and then murdered, said clues left by a leader of the family’s assassins had led investigators to a makeshift grave where they found the possible remains of the czar’s son, Aleksei, and one of his daughters.
Under Lenin’s orders, the czar and his family were shot to death in 1918 in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains in the heart of the country. Their bodies were then most likely doused with acid, mutilated and buried in secret graves so the remains could not be recovered and used as a rallying point for anti-Bolshevik forces.
Nicholas had abdicated the year before, and he and his family were then detained.
In 1991, during the last days of the Soviet Union, the remains of Nicholas, his wife, Aleksandra, and three of their five children were discovered in the city, and seven years later, they were interred in a cathedral in St. Petersburg that holds the crypts of other Russian royalty.
But the remains of Aleksei, the 13-year-old heir to the throne, and one daughter — probably 19-year-old Maria, though there is some dispute about which one — could not be located.
In 2002, scientists thought they might have found those remains, but testing proved them wrong.
On Thursday, though, Sergei Pogorelov, an archaeologist in Yekaterinburg, said in an interview with a Russian television station that the newly unearthed remains might be the missing ones. He said an anthropologist had already determined that the bones were those of a boy 10 to 13 years old and a woman 18 to 23 years old. “Additional analysis and comparisons will be carried out,” he said.
Whatever the results of that testing, which is expected to include DNA matching, they will probably not settle the matter. The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church has never fully acknowledged that the remains of the czar were discovered in 1991, even though scientists conducted extensive DNA tests, using samples from relatives of the royal family, that appeared to prove their authenticity.
Already on Friday, the church leadership in Moscow expressed skepticism about this new find.
In fact, hoaxes, blunders and all manner of misinformation have long abounded when it comes to the Romanovs and their fate. For decades after the assassinations, people would surface and claim that they were family members who had somehow survived the bloodshed, most notably the czar’s daughter Anastasia.
August 25 2007
Alexei Vladykin/Associated Pres
A cross in Yekaterinburg marks where two bodies — maybe those of Aleksei and a sister — were found.
An archaeologist in Yekaterinburg, the city where the royal Romanov family was imprisoned and then murdered, said clues left by a leader of the family’s assassins had led investigators to a makeshift grave where they found the possible remains of the czar’s son, Aleksei, and one of his daughters.
Under Lenin’s orders, the czar and his family were shot to death in 1918 in the basement of a house in Yekaterinburg, a city in the Ural Mountains in the heart of the country. Their bodies were then most likely doused with acid, mutilated and buried in secret graves so the remains could not be recovered and used as a rallying point for anti-Bolshevik forces.
Nicholas had abdicated the year before, and he and his family were then detained.
In 1991, during the last days of the Soviet Union, the remains of Nicholas, his wife, Aleksandra, and three of their five children were discovered in the city, and seven years later, they were interred in a cathedral in St. Petersburg that holds the crypts of other Russian royalty.
But the remains of Aleksei, the 13-year-old heir to the throne, and one daughter — probably 19-year-old Maria, though there is some dispute about which one — could not be located.
In 2002, scientists thought they might have found those remains, but testing proved them wrong.
On Thursday, though, Sergei Pogorelov, an archaeologist in Yekaterinburg, said in an interview with a Russian television station that the newly unearthed remains might be the missing ones. He said an anthropologist had already determined that the bones were those of a boy 10 to 13 years old and a woman 18 to 23 years old. “Additional analysis and comparisons will be carried out,” he said.
Whatever the results of that testing, which is expected to include DNA matching, they will probably not settle the matter. The leadership of the Russian Orthodox Church has never fully acknowledged that the remains of the czar were discovered in 1991, even though scientists conducted extensive DNA tests, using samples from relatives of the royal family, that appeared to prove their authenticity.
Already on Friday, the church leadership in Moscow expressed skepticism about this new find.
In fact, hoaxes, blunders and all manner of misinformation have long abounded when it comes to the Romanovs and their fate. For decades after the assassinations, people would surface and claim that they were family members who had somehow survived the bloodshed, most notably the czar’s daughter Anastasia.
Subscribe to:
Comments (Atom)
