The Romanov Remains: Reburial and Controversy
MA Thesis in European Studies Graduate School for Humanities
Universiteit van Amsterdam
Author: Cora Burridge Student Number: 12557145 Main Supervisor: Dr Ewa Stanczyk Second Supervisor: Dr Pola Cebulak
July 2020 Word Count - 22,243
Table of Contents
Abstract … 2
Introduction … 3
Theoretical Background … 7
Chapter 1: The 1980 Reburial … 16
Chapter 2: The 1991 Exhumation … 25
Chapter 3: The 1998 Reburial … 43
Chapter 4: The 2007 Discovery … 51
Conclusion … 66
Abstract
This work analyses the discovery and incomplete reburial of the last Romanov family and the discourses produced by these events. With a broader view on the politics of memory and the nation building efforts of the Soviet Union and the Russian state, the competition that emerged between the actors who sought to control these remains and their remembrance shall be shown to develop from sole state autonomy to a more nuanced sharing of commemoration. Ultimately, this analysis shall be used to argue that the incomplete Romanov reburial rejects efforts made by actors who seek to manipulate it for their own ends. Instead, the discourse and debates that surround the bones continue, leading to incomplete remembrance.
Introduction
The execution of the last royal family of Russia took place in the early hours of 17th July 1918. The Romanovs, who had been under house arrest within the Ipatiev House in Yekaterinburg, were woken up by their Bolshevik guards and escorted, alongside their doctor and three servants, to the basement of the building. It was here that Tsar Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra and children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia and Alexei were summarily executed.
Following the execution, the Bolshevik guard had to dispose of the bodies. They removed them from the Ipatiev House and drove towards the Four Brothers mine in the surrounding forests. It was here that the corpses were dumped into an abandoned mineshaft, yet, it ultimately proved to be too shallow for a final resting place. The bodies remained there for two days until the leader of the guard, Yakov Yurovsky, returned with kerosene and sulfuric acid. After removing the bodies from the mine, Yurovsky poured acid on the remains of two of the tsar’s children, Alexei and Maria, burnt them and buried the remnants a short distance away from the mineshaft. Further away, the rest of the bodies were burned, placed into a grave and had sulfuric acid poured onto them. Before leaving the site, Yurovsky told his men to never speak about what had happened in the basement.
From that evening onwards, the burial site of the Romanovs remained a mystery until 1979 when they were discovered by the scientist Alexander Avdonin and filmmaker Geli Ryabov. This duo reburied the remains the following year, fearful for the consequences of their discovery. The bones were subsequently exhumed by Yeltsin’s post-Soviet government in 1991, yet those of Maria and Alexei remained missing. After seven years of extensive debate with several actors, most notably the Russian Orthodox Church who denied the authenticity of the remains, the Kremlin successfully reburied five of the seven sets of the Romanov bones in 1998. It was only in 2007 that the final two remains of Maria and Alexei were unearthed, leading to further debate between the state and the Russian Orthodox Church. At the time of writing, a reburial of the last two Romanovs has yet to occur.
The main research questions of this thesis revolve around several key themes. Fundamentally, this work shall examine the discourses that emerged as a result of the discovery of the Romanov bones; to identify them and to analyse why such discourses were promoted. Secondly, we shall analyse the actors who sought to control the remains, namely the government, the Russian Orthodox Church, Sverdlovsk region and the popular imagination, in order to explain their actions. The
competition between actors to manipulate the remains for their own ends and control their
remembrance shall form the focal part of this work. This brings us into the wider question of how the Romanov remains and the legacy of the last royal family fit into the Russian state’s efforts at nation building and broader memory politics, specifically concerning the politics of remembrance and who has autonomy within this field. Finally, on a theoretical level, the work shall question the
consequences of an incomplete reburial, exploring how it affects the narratives being promoted through such an event and the broader implications for national healing and progression.
Popular writings are often the dominant genre when it comes to literature surrounding the final days of the imperial family. It is important to state that within the academic field, analysis of the fate of 1
the remains of the Romanovs and their reburial has not yet been the sole focus of one work. Indeed, the 1998 reburial has been the main focus if mentioned. Slater has highlighted the myths that evolved from the Romanov deaths and their interaction with historical fact. The author analyzes the
politicisation of the remains in the 90s, arguing that they were utilised by Yeltsin and the Russian Orthodox Church to help form their new identities in the post-Soviet world , yet the greater focus of the 2
work is the popular myths that emerged. Schoeberlein has built on this idea, arguing that the Church used the remains to express their sanctity and autonomy. Knox has agreed, arguing that the 1998 3
reburial saw the power of the Russian Orthodox Church confirmed over the Kremlin. Broader analysis 4 1 See Helen Rappaport, Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs, London: Windmill Books,
2009, Simon Seabag Montefiore, The Romanovs: 1613-1918, London: Weidenfeld &
Nicolson, 2016, Robert Service, The Last of the Tsars: Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution, London: Pan Macmillan, 2017.
2 Wendy Slater, The Many Deaths of Tsar Nicholas II: Relics, Remains and the Romanovs, London:
Routledge, 2007, 27.
3 John S. Schoeberlein, “Doubtful Dead Fathers and Musical Corpses; What to do with Dead Stalin,
Lenin and Tsar Nicholas”, Death of the Father: An Anthropology of the End in Political Authority, New York: Berghahn Books, 2004, 217.
4 Zoe Katrina Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church: Religion in Russia after Communism,
of Russian memory politics have noted the increasing popularity of the imperial family. The nostalgia 5
for the Romanovs is something that has to be taken into consideration as the Kremlin battles how to remember 1917, as part of its efforts to manipulate history for political gains and legitimacy. Finally, 6
Anstett has noted that Russia has struggled to come to terms with the mass repression under the Soviet Union , of which the imperial family are a highly symbolic part of. This work will add to this 7
existing literature through having a sole focus on the remains themselves and their reburial efforts, from 1979 to contemporary Russia, analysing and explaining the competitive remembrance that emerged between the various actors that have sought to control them.
The most distinguishing feature of the reburial of the Romanovs is that it remains incomplete; despite the discovery of the bones of Maria and Alexei in 2007, they have not been laid to rest at the time of writing. This makes the Romanovs a particularly noteworthy case within the wider field of reburials and thus worthy of an in depth examination. Scholarly debate thus far has examined the ways in which reburials are symbolic of political transformation and their broader role in the politics of memory and nation building, amongst other issues. It shall be argued that the incomplete nature of a 8
reburial rejects efforts made by actors who seek to manipulate it for their own ends. Instead, the discourse and debates that surround the bones continue, leading to incomplete remembrance. This is heightened by the Romanov remains not being authenticated by all the primary actors in their reburial, undermining efforts made by those exploiting the bones.
This work shall use the case studies of the 1980 and 1998 reburial, alongside the exhumation of the bones of Maria and Alexei in 2007, in order to examine the discourses surrounding the Romanov
5 R.W. (Robert William) Davies, Soviet History in the Yeltsin Era, Basingstoke, New York: Macmillan,
New York St Martin’s Press, 1997, 51.
6 Olga Malinova, “The Embarrassing Centenary: Reinterpretation of the 1917 Revolution in the Official
Historical Narrative of Post-Soviet Russia (1991-2017).”, Nationalities Papers: Special Section:
Representation of Minorities: Perspectives and Challenges, vol. 46, no.2 (2018): 272–289, 280.
7 Élisabeth Anstett, “An Anthropological Approach to Human Remains from the Gulags.”, Human
Remains and Mass Violence: Methodological Approaches, edited by Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014, 192.
8 See John Borneman, Death of the Father: An Anthropology of the End in Political Authority, New
York: Berghahn Books, 2004, 25., Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies : Reburial
and Postsocialist Change, New York: Columbia University Press, 1999, 3., Margaret Schwartz, Dead Matter: The Meaning of Iconic Corpses, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2015, 7.
remains which form the basis of this study. The historical accounts and media sources used to exemplify these discourses shall be reinforced with wider academic material concerning themes such as the politics of memory and national identity within Russia, as well as broader works on the topic of reburial. This shall grant us an academically sound analysis.
The analysis of the social, political and cultural debates that arose from the remains and the competition between the various actors within this domain shall be conducted chronologically. Chapter 1 shall address the discovery of the remains in 1979 by Alexander Avdonin and Geli Ryabov and the secretive reburial of the bones in the following year. Chapter 2 shall analyse the discourses around the remains that followed their state led exhumation in 1991 and how different actors responded to the discovery. The following chapter takes the 1998 reburial of five of the last Romanov family as the central event, analysing the divide between the state and the Russian Orthodox Church that ensued as a result. The final chapter brings this study into contemporary Russia, examining the continuing debates over the final two remains of Maria and Alexei which were discovered in 2007 and who still await reburial.
Theoretical Background
The politics of reburials and dead bodies have been analysed from a wide variety of perspectives; this chapter shall examine the scholarly debate surrounding the significance of reburials and, more broadly, prominent dead bodies. The following discussion is focused on the reburials of such figures which have been managed by the state, as this directly relates to the topic of our work. Broader works on the significance of death for a country’s government shall also be included when relevant in order to provide a wider theoretical framework in which this study shall situate itself.
The first main consensus within existing theoretical works, contends that reburials have an intrinsic relationship with the state and its government. At a fundamental level, through controlling a dead body and its reburial, a ruling government expresses its authority on the ultimate issue of who controls life and death. Indeed, Steppaut has stated that the sovereignty of the state and the authority 9
of the state to have that sovereignty is ‘fundamentally related to the body and to issues of life and death’. Contestations over the right to control dead bodies are inherently actors trying to express 10
their ultimate jurisdiction over the other. Such actors can include the population, the state and religious institutions. Through winning sovereignty over the dead body, the victor, often the state, can then 11
utilise it for their own goals. The ambiguous nature of the dead leaves them open for manipulation by those who control them, using them as an instrument to portray and promote certain values. 12
Therefore, reburials often form a key part of a government’s political process. Such events can 13
create a valuable rallying point for the government to unify the nation around as they come together 14
to collectively grieve and observe the reburial of a prominent public figure.
9 Anya Bernstein, “Love and Resurrection: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia.”
American Anthropologist, vol. 118, no.1 (2016): 12–23, 13.
10 Finn Stepputat, Governing the Dead : Sovereignty and the Politics of Dead Bodies, New York, NY:
Manchester University Press, 2014, 4.
11 Stepputat, Governing the Dead, 5.
12 Verdery, Political Lives of Dead Bodies, 28.
13 Walima T. Kalusa, “The Politics of the Corpse: President Levy Mwanawasa’s Death, Funeral and
Political Contestation in Post-Colonial Zambia.”, Journal of Southern African Studies, vol. 43, no.6 (2017): 1137–1155, 1139.
14 Michael Kearl and Anoel Rinaldi, “Political Uses of the Dead as Symbols in Contemporary Civil
The usefulness of reburial for ruling parties of the state is up for debate. On the one hand, it has been argued that a ‘state’ reburial or ceremony offers a chance for forgiveness through providing a situation in which the state can display respect and grief for victims of its rule or its predecessors. 15
This presumes that the state is a ‘transhistorical entity’ which can be held accountable and be forgiven for the past. Furthermore, through reburying a figure that represents the population’s historical 16
suffering, the state acknowledges its past and attempts to break from it, marking a new beginning. Thus it negates the threat that a lack of recognition could render debates about a certain body to dominate public discourse and as such, call into debate the culpability of the state. Such an 17
occurrence can be seen in the exhumation of mass graves of victims of a country’s government, for example, within Cambodia. In 1979, the new government undertook the task of exhuming the victims of the mass violence committed by the dictator Pol Pot; these remains formed the foundation of the memorialisation process that supported the peace accords signed in 1991. The process symbolised 18
the state acknowledging the atrocities that occurred under its predecessor and acted as a carefully planned measure to confront the nation’s past and progress from it. 19
The exhumation of mass graves also saw the emergence of another key aspect of reburials; that of forensic identification. The development of this phenomenon occurred during the 1980s and 1990s, with projects undertaken in South America and Spain, being some of the most notable
instances whereby forensics were used to identify remains within mass graves. Forensic identification is important in multiple respects to the field of dead bodies and reburials. Through identifying remains, bones of victims of government repression can be used in legal prosecutions against the perpetrators
and consequently, help the country reconcile with a violent past. In South America, the findings of
20
15 Matthew Detar, “Absence of the Present: The Reburial of Adnan Menderes and the Condition of
Possibility of Public Memory in Turkey.”, Communication and Critical/Cultural Studies, vol. 13. no.1 (2016): 93–108, 103.
16 Ibid.
17 Jenny Hockey, Carol Komaromy and Kate Woodthorpe, eds., The Matter of Death: Space, Place
and Materiality, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010, 233.
18 Anne Yvonne Guillou, “From Bones-as-Evidence to Tutelary Spirits: The Status of Bodies in the
Aftermath of the Khmer Rouge Genocide.”, Human Remains and Mass Violence: Methodological
Approaches, edited by Jean-Marc Dreyfus and Élisabeth Anstett, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014, 146–160, 150.
19 Ibid, 151.
20 Élisabeth Anstett and Jean-Marc Dreyfus, “Introduction: The Tales Destruction Tells”, Destruction
such forensic identifications were often used in truth and reconciliation commissions. Moreover, such 21
exhumations and identifications of dead bodies end immunity for those who committed the crime, providing a form of retroactive justice for the victims’ families and friends. Forensics also grants an 22
insight into how a person died, not only providing an understanding into how the perpetrator committed the crime but providing a sense of closure for those close to the individual. This 23
emergence of forensic identification was coupled with a growing popular interest in the phenomenon and the ability of forensics to produce media friendly presentations of their work has curated a strong level of public trust in the outcomes of their investigations. 24
On the other hand, Borneman argues that the state’s presence and control over matters of death and burial can hinder public mourning and therefore, national trauma is less likely to be healed. It can also increase the risk of the death being used to reintroduce ‘old structures of authority’ 25
through emoting nostalgia for an old regime. This can be observed in Japan at the end of the twentieth century. Following the Pacific War in 1945, Emperor Hirohito’s public image was changed dramatically from his war persona, which, in the public view, had led to Japan’s defeat. From being depicted as the military commander in chief, he was subsequently portrayed as a peace loving leader in order to appease the occupying forces and his population. Hirohito also rejected the traditional idea of the Emperor’s divine status and enshrined this rejection in a new constitution. However, in 1989, Hirohito died and his death presented an opportunity for the conservative forces within Japan to promote a renewal of the traditional imperial system. They focused on re-introducing the mythicality and divinity of the Emperor, using the funeral to display this to the population, especially the younger generation. 26
Thus Emperor Hirohito’s burial presented the conservative wing within Japan with the opportunity to reestablish the hegemony of imperial rule, reintroducing an ‘old structure of authority’. As such, one
Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Manchester, New York: Manchester University Press, 2016, 4.
21 Layla Renshaw, Exhuming Loss Memory, Materiality, and Mass Graves of the Spanish Civil War,
Walnut Creek, Calif.: Left Coast Press, 2011, 9.
22 Ibid, 11.
23 Nicky Rousseau, “Identification, Politics, Disciplines: Missing Persons and Colonial Skeletons in
South Africa.” Human Remains and Identification: Mass Violence, Genocide, and the “Forensic Turn”, edited by Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2015, 9.
24 Renshaw, Exhuming Loss, 229. 25 Borneman, Death of the Father, 25. 26 Borneman, Death of the Father, 104-123.
can observe that the current theoretical framework demonstrates that reburials and dead bodies can be used as both political instruments for healing or regression
This idea coincides with a highly symbolic dimension of reburials; that they can symbolise political transformation, as argued by Verdery in her analysis of the phenomenon in post-Socialist states. Reburials after the collapse of communism represented a shift from Soviet values to the 27
promotion of democracy, the resurgence of religion and the formation of new nations . The reburial of 28
Imre Nagy is an example of such an instance. The communist prime minister of Hungary during the 1956 revolution was executed in 1958 after trying to reform the country’s socialist agenda. He was buried in an unmarked grave. Thirty one years later, on 16th June 1989, the streets of Budapest were packed to watch his reburial which was also broadcast on national TV. This event symbolised 29
different values for different groups, promoting national unity through his body encompassing them all. It also represented the victory of a more ‘human’ socialism over the Stalinist agenda and the opening up of the public stage on which others could tell their stories of persecution. The body’s power in 30
healing the nation and promoting unity came from its very diversity of symbolic meanings for different sections of society and thus it enabled the country to politically transform and progress from years of Soviet rule. Yet, this progression from the past can cause contestation and therefore, a reburial can become the scene of conflicting political interests, where one side aligns with the past values that a body represents against those who look to future change. Indeed, as new nations seek to build a 31
unifying ideology, they often borrow from the past in order to help them transform. However, during 32
the 1990s, the increase in activity around prominent dead bodies within post-Socialist states 33
symbolised a clear progression from Soviet values and rule; this was crucial to transforming the political system. 34
27 Verdery, Political Lives of Dead Bodies, 3. 28 Ibid.
29 Ibid, 31. 30 Ibid, 32.
31 Detar, Absence of the Present, 102.
32 Sajal Nag, “Two Nations and a Dead Body: Mortuarial Rites and Post-Colonial Modes of
Nation-Making in South Asia.”, Economic and Political Weekly, vol. 41, no.50 (2006): 5183–5190, 5184.
33 Bernstein, Love and Resurrection,13. 34 Borneman, Death of the Father, 2.
This can also be applicable to other states outside the former Soviet Union, where the dead have been brought back into the public eye by a ruling regime, in order to question traditional ideals and progress from them. In Israel in 1964, leader of the Zionist revisionist movement, Zev 35
Jabotinsky, was reburied on Mount Herzl in Jerusalem, after his remains were brought back from New York following his original burial in the city in 1940. This had long been lobbied for by the right wing within Israel, yet the left had consistently opposed it until the 1960s, when the left wing prime minister agreed to the reburial. Jabotinsky was given full state reburial rights. This reburial was thus utilised to symbolise an official act of resolution between the Left and the Right within Israel, reinforcing the legitimacy of Jabotinsky’s successors to power. 36
As well as being a sign of political transformation, reburials can also be a symbol of regression, bringing up a past that had been buried. Prominent dead bodies being brought back into the public 37
sphere, brings the past values that they represented and promoted into debate. What such figures 38
represent can vary for different groups and it must be determined as to whether these values are sought to be resurrected or buried back in the past. For some, reburial means ‘a figurative form of resurrection’ not only in terms of the ideals that the dead body symbolises but also an individual’s reputation, using a reburial to revise history. Alternatively, reburials can be used to definitively put 39
the past to rest, preventing a regression into historical values. Thus the state chooses who to grant immortality and who to permanently resign to history. This can be exemplified in the body of Lenin. 40
The revolutionary leader lies within his mausoleum, his body on display to the general public, situated right in the heart of Russian government on Red Square. Debate surrounding the potential reburial of Lenin has continued throughout Putin’s rule, with the Kremlin seemingly reluctant to take decisive action. Some politicians have called for the body to be finally buried, however, the head of the
35 Claudio Walter Lomnitz-Adler, Death and the Idea of Mexico, New York: Zone Books, 2005, 18. 36 Weingrod, Bones In, Bones Out, 47.
37 World Council of Indigenous Peoples. “The Sacred and the Profane: The Reburial Issue as an
Issue.”, Death Studies, vol. 14, no.6 (1990): 503–517, 508.
38 Verdery, Political Lives of Dead Bodies, 20.
39 Michael G. Kammen, Digging up the Dead; A History of Notable American Reburials, Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2009, 7.
Communist Party, Gennady Zyuganov, has violently rejected this idea as ‘blasphemous’. The whole 41
situation in turn, symbolises the difficulty the modern Russian government faces in its attitude towards the October 1917 revolution; to put its commemoration and veneration finally to rest or to simply not address the matter for fear of controversy. This issue highlights one of the key debates on the purpose of states organising reburials of prominent historical figures; to what extent they wish to put the past to rest or to resurrect it and to confront the divisive discourse this may cause. As such, reburials are often the sites of contention not only about the direction of the future of the nation but also how to 42
remember its past.
Another key aspect of reburials is their relationship to religion. It has been argued that in post-Socialist states, reburials often coincided with the re-emergence of religion. Prior to communism, religion dominated practices surrounding death and burial, yet under the Soviet Union, the regime sought to immortalise its political heroes, not through religious terminology but granting them eternal life by making them immortal in the popular memory. Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, 43
religions sought to return to their pre-communist status and reburials provided a method to display 44
this influence. Outside of the post-Socialist states, a similar phenomenon can be observed with religion emerging from regimes that repressed its existence. Within Cambodia, following the exhumation of victims of the Pol Pot regime, the reburial rites saw the re-emergence of Buddhist monks attending the ceremonies, at a time when they were only just beginning to be tolerated once more by the country’s government. Thus reburials can serve as an event in which the government 45
takes a conciliatory measure towards religions repressed by those previously in power. In a broader sense, the dead body itself can be seen to be a vessel for fears surrounding not only death, but also faith and thus they can be seen as an inherently religious entity. Consequently, dead bodies are 46
used by both the state and religion, serving as a melting pot of both nationalist and religious ideals. 47
41 Bernstein, Love and Resurrection, 19.
42 Schwartz, Dead Matter: The Meaning of Iconic Corpses, 7. 43 Borneman, Death of the Father, 6.
44 Verdery, Political Lives of Dead Bodies, 32. 45 Guillou, From Bones-as-Evidence, 151.
46 Anya Bernstein, The Future of Immortality: Remaking Life and Death in Contemporary Russia,
Princeton University Press, 2019, 44.
The location of a reburial is another important factor to consider. Where bodies are reburied is a conscious and strategic choice on behalf of those organising the reburial. One of the aspects under 48
consideration is whether to make the body overtly visible in a public space or to rebury them in a way that keeps them hidden from the public eye. This in turn relates to the aims of a reburial. The actual 49
site of a prominent public reburial can also be a cause of contestation; it is a source of pride for an important reburial to take place at a certain location. As well as being a method to elevate a location symbolically, reburials are also a source of income, not only in the actual ceremony but the potential for a tourist industry to develop as people come to visit the grave. Finally, the site of a reburial has the potential to enhance the status of the figures being buried there, for example, if it takes place on already consecrated ground. Alternatively, the burial of a sacred figure can then elevate the status of that location to sacred as well. 50
Bodies can also be reburied without their identity being known. The most clear example of this phenomenon is the grave of the unknown soldier, which has been adopted around the world to symbolise the sacrifice of the ordinary man in the act of war. Starting in Europe, following the First World War, the unknown soldier’s grave served as a site for families to grieve their loved ones lost in the war and never returned to their home countries for burial. This also created a tool to rebuild 51
national unity following violent conflict. The very ambiguity of the person being reburied is an 52
instrument to facilitate national grieving, allowing the population to place their own stories upon the remains and mourn.
Another example of these unidentified or even nonexistent remains can be found in the reburial of RIF soap following the end of WW2. RIF soap, manufactured by the Nazis, became infamous for
48 Verdery, Political Lives of Dead Bodies, 27.
49 Monica J. Casper and Lisa Jean Moore, Missing Bodies; The Politics of Visibility, New York: New
York University Press, 2009, 3.
50 Kammen, Digging up the Dead, 10.
51 K. S. Inglis, “Entombing Unknown Soldiers: From London and Paris to Baghdad.”, History and
Memory, vol. 5, no. 2 (1993) :7–31, 23.
52 Aleksandar Ignjatović, “From Constructed Memory to Imagined National Tradition: The Tomb of the
Unknown Yugoslav Soldier (1934-38).”, The Slavonic and East European Review, vol. 88, no.4 (2010): 624–651, 628.
supposedly being produced from the remains of Jewish victims of the Holocaust; the validity of this claim has since been denied by the historical community whom have found no evidence of this being true. Yet for the Jewish community, the soap formed a crucial part of their post war memory and they insisted on the truth of the story. They reburied the soap with full Jewish burial rites, symbolising their reclamation of these remains from the Nazis. Although this soap was not formed of Jewish victims of 53
the Holocaust, the reburial of the soap once again allowed an outlet for grief, similar to the unknown soldier, and a reclamation of their history.
However, the identity and location of bodies can also be deliberately kept a mystery, hindering their journey to reburial. Such a phenomenon was observed in Argentina in the late 80s, following the end of the military dictatorship between 1976 and 1983. A conscious effort was made by the regime to keep the location of their victims’ bodies a mystery and as such, following the regime’s fall, there was a lack of physical proof of the crimes committed. The absence of a corpse causes the discourse 54
surrounding its disappearance to continue, bringing a country’s repressive past into the current day. 55
On a more intimate level, the lack of a body also denies its loved ones the opportunity to grieve through reburial and promotes a sense of injustice. These kinds of disappeared corpses also display 56
the attitude of the regime that disposed of them. In Argentina, a concerted effort was made to 57
conceal the bodies but in other countries, such as Croatia following the Ustasha massacres in 1941, bodies were thrown into rivers with little care for their concealment. 58
53 Joachim Neander, “‘Symbolically Burying the Six Million’: Post-War Soap Burial in Romania,
Bulgaria and Brazil.”, Human Remains and Violence: An Interdisciplinary Journal, vol. 2, no.1 (2016): 23–40.
54 Sévane Garibian, “Seeking the Dead Among the Living:: Embodying the Disappeared of the
Argentinian Dictatorship through Law.” Human Remains and Mass Violence: Methodological
Approaches, edited by Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014, 44-45.
55 Jon Shute, “Moral Discourse and Action in Relation to the Corpse:: Integrative Concepts for a
Criminology of Mass Violence.” Human Remains and Mass Violence: Methodological Approaches, edited by Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc Dreyfus, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014, 82.
56 Ibid 94.
57 Alexander Korb, “The Disposal of Corpses in an Ethnicized Civil War:: Croatia, 1941–45.”, Human
Remains and Mass Violence: Methodological Approaches, edited by Élisabeth Anstett & Jean-Marc
Dreyfus, Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2014, 106.
Finally, when addressing the subject of exhumed bodies and their burial, it must be
acknowledged that little has been made within the academic field about the human rights of the dead body itself. Forensic experts have admitted that the increasing prominence of their field has not been accompanied by a thorough discussion about the ethics and rights of the bodies that they examine. 59
The body instead has been viewed as an instrument to benefit the living rather than considering the value of an exhumation or reburial to the body itself and what a forensic examination can bring to it. 60
The above theoretical analysis shall be used to ground our work concerning the Romanov remains and their reburial in contemporary Russia. This shall present as full a picture as possible of the issues surrounding their reburials and what this can tell us about the Russian state. The
theoretical background also provides evidence of the worth of examining reburials as a tool of political analysis; how a nation faces its past is key to how it structures its future. As shown above, the 61
existing theory also demonstrates how the Romanov remains fit into this discourse; while the absence of corpses has been analysed within such examples as Argentina, an incomplete reburial as seen in the Romanovs seems to be lacking within the current theoretical discussion, to the fullest extent of our knowledge.
59 Adam Rosenblatt, “International Forensic Investigations and the Human Rights of the Dead.”
Human Rights Quarterly, vol 32, no.4 (2010): 921–950, 923.
60 Rosenblatt, International Forensic Investigations, 923.
61 Michael Uhall, “The End of the Affair with Life: Political Theory and the Corpse.”, Critical Horizons,
Chapter 1 - The Secret Reburial
The first chapter of this work shall analyse the discovery of the Romanov remains by Alexander Avdonin and Geli Ryabov in 1979 and their subsequent reburial in 1980. The issue of how the state managed the remains shall be explored, as well as the consequences of this suppressed past being unearthed in the context of the Soviet regime. The main actors who manipulated the remains in this period are identified as the Soviet government, the individuals of Avdonin and Ryabov and to a limited extent, the popular imagination. The attitudes of these actors towards the bodies shall be used to show how the broader remembrance of the imperial family fitted into the ideology of the Soviet state and its citizens. Ultimately, it will be proven that the state had autonomy over the Romanov remains and their memorialisation.
On 19th July 1918, the newspapers Pravda and Izvestia announced the death of Tsar Nicholas II with the statement; ‘The Presidium of the Ural Regional Soviet passed a resolution to execute Nicholas Romanov and carried it out on July 16. Romanov’s wife and children have been sent to a safe place.’ The Bolshevik government denied the execution of the rest of the Romanovs, however 62
the damage of executing the entire family would come to haunt the government’s successors. Soon after the execution, the Bolsheviks were expelled from Yekaterinburg by the White Army. On 7th February 1919, the tsarist forces appointed Nicholas Sokolov, special investigator for the Omsk Provincial Court, to investigate the execution of the royal family. Despite finding evidence including buttons and jewelry near the site of the burials, Sokolov was unable to exactly locate or recover the bodies of the Romanovs. A photo of Sokolov, shows him unwittingly standing on the exact burial site in the forest outside of Yekaterinburg. When the Red Army retook the city, Sokolov fled to France where he wrote up his findings concerning the Romanovs’ fate, completing it just before dying of a heart attack in 1924. His report circulated widely throughout Europe and as a result, the world 63
became aware that the whole of the Romanov family had died in the basement of the Ipatiev House.
62 Greg King and Penny Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons, 2003,
338.
The secrecy surrounding the burial of the remains and the absence of any corpses initially proved to be advantageous for the new Bolshevik government; it concealed the act which could have further motivated the White Army forces in its fight against the Communist Red Army, denying them of royal martyrs that could have acted as a powerful rallying symbol for their cause. A similar case was seen in Tsar Boris III of Bulgaria, whose remains vanished following the Communist takeover and thus Communist control over significant remains was not unusual. Indeed, the handling of the Romanov 64
remains was vitally important for the new Bolshevik government. Through allowing the bodies to 65
disappear, it was impossible to hold the Bolsheviks accountable for their execution. It also concealed the violent nature of their deaths; the murder of children, in whatever circumstances, was unlikely to win favour for a new regime. Thus, for the Bolsheviks, the bodies of the Romanovs were to be consigned to the past and never to be bought into the public eye. However, this would prove to be impossible; in 1926, following the widespread publication of Sokolov’s report in the West, the
Bolshevik government reluctantly authorised a censored version to be published within its borders , in 66
which it was acknowledged that the whole family had been killed yet censored some of the more violent details. For the new regime, it was dangerous to admit to the nature of the executions; despite victory of the White Army, tsarist sentiment still existed within factions of the opposition. Through displaying the truth about the execution, the new regime would have opened itself up to criticism and accusations of barbarity and whilst repression did exist to suppress these views, censoring and hiding the issue was a much simpler measure.
In the ensuing years of the Soviet Union, the last imperial family and their bodies were sidelined by the regime. For the Soviet government, most notably under Stalin, history was ultimately used as a political tool rather than it being viewed as a subject of academic discussion and investigation. Thus 67
the dominant historical narrative of the time was a result of the state’s will. As a consequence, under Stalin, no comprehensive histories of Nicholas II’s reign were approved and the final tsar was only utilised as a scapegoat for the failures of imperial Russia. Russia under the late Romanovs was
64 Verdery, Political Lives of Dead Bodies, 14. 65 Borneman, Death of the Father, 2.
66 Robert K. Massie, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, Random House Publishing Group, 2012, 26. 67 Roger D. Markwick, Rewriting History in Soviet Russia: The Politics of Revisionist Historiography,
considered to be a ‘semi-colony’ of the West, condemning the country’s subjugation to this power bloc. The tsar, therefore, was a figure to be placed in the past, with no value for the present or future 68
apart from legitimising the Soviet ideology as the superior philosophy. It is of no surprise that the remains of the family were not investigated by the regime; by allowing them to remain undiscovered, the Stalin regime firmly placed them into the past.
However, the de-stalinization process under Krushchev allowed academic discussion of the tsarist era to emerge. For example, in January 1956, a conference of over six hundred historians debated, amongst other matters, the extent to which the imperial empire resulted in a ‘prison house of the peoples’, referencing the nationalist movements suppressed by the tsars. The tsars and the 69
Romanovs were thus no longer considered as an irrelevant or wholly restricted subject. More significantly, this era saw the government try to piece together a definitive account of how the Romanovs died, recording interviews with the survivors of the Bolshevik firing squad. These testimonies were never released to the public. Despite this, the move shows a concerted effort by 70
the government to establish the facts of its history, whether politically useful for the regime or not and was a clear shift from Krushchev’s predecessor. However, no motions were made as a result of these investigations to try and locate the remains. As the country began to no longer fully endorse the Stalinist repression, arguably a state effort to exhume the Romanovs would have been considered a move too far. The execution was not committed under the orders of Stalin, but under Lenin, a figure perceived to be still untouchable for fear of undermining the very communist ideology on which the Soviet Union was built. An exhumation of these remains and the violent nature of the deaths of the children in particular, could be perceived as harming Lenin’s image and thus it was again safer for these remains to stay undiscovered.
Following Krushchev’s death, the Brezhnev era saw the scaling back of Krushchev’s de-stalinization policy and thus official interest in the fate of the Romanovs decreased rapidly. Yet,
68 Markwick, Rewriting History in Soviet Russia, 77. 69 Ibid.
70 Robert Service, The Last of the Tsars: Nicholas II and the Russian Revolution, London: Pan
popular fascination with the family began to grow. Monarchists started to re-emerge within Soviet society and although they did not publicly declare or act on their beliefs, they were inherently anti-Soviet. Some advocated for the restoration of the Romanov family on the throne, through surviving relatives now exiled in the West, whilst the other faction aimed for the convening of a new Land Assembly to elect a new tsar. In 1972-1973, a study of the execution of the Romanovs was 71
serialised in the Soviet newspaper Zvezda and quickly sold out, testifying to the power of the mystery of the royal family’s fate held over ordinary Soviet citizens. The work ‘The Monarch State’ about the history of Nicholas II was widely distributed and sold as samizdat across the Soviet Union. The Anna 72
Anderson case, the Polish factory worker who gained notoriety by claiming to be the Grand Duchess Anastasia, was persistently present in the Western media. This is not to claim that the monarchist forces within and outside Russia posed an actual practical threat to the Soviet state, however it demonstrates that the state did not fully control the discourse surrounding the bodies of the
Romanovs. Through having no state funeral or state recognition of the remains, the Romanovs had never been put to rest in the popular imagination, one that was starting to break free of the Soviet state.
The Soviet government took action against this, demonstrating the trepidation they felt around the popular remembrance of the Romanovs. For instance, in 1977, the editor and assistant editor of the Soviet newspaper, Avrora, were forcibly removed for publishing a poem about the royal family which mourned their deaths. In the same year, the site of the execution, the Ipatiev House in 73
Yekaterinburg, was demolished. A secret note which argued for the demolition of the Ipatiev House, was delivered to the Politburo from the KGB. The KGB cited several reasons for why the house had to be demolished; they described how anti-Soviet groups in the West regularly organised propaganda against the Soviet Union in which they cited the Ipatiev House. The KGB also referenced how on the anniversary of the Romanov deaths, people would congregate around the house with candles and get baptised. These actions were classified as anti-Soviet and the Politburo voted unanimously in favour
71 John Barrett Dunlop, The Faces of Contemporary Russian Nationalism, Princeton, N.J: Princeton
University Press, (1983), 251.
72 Ibid, 252.
of destroying the house on 3rd July 1975. The destruction took place two years later and Boris 74
Yeltsin oversaw the project in his position as First Secretary of the Sverdlovsk Regional Party Committee. Whilst the delay indicates a lack of urgent concern surrounding the issue, the fact that it still occurred and was highlighted by the KGB, demonstrates that the Romanov deaths still held power over the Soviet state. At a time of economic decline and further uncertainty about the Soviet Union’s success in maintaining a communist system, overt displays of monarchist sentiment were not
welcome. The Romanovs had thus become a symbol of opposition to the Soviet regime; whether this was true or not for those individuals who expressed sympathy with the imperial family, from the state’s perspective, this is how they perceived it to be.
Another reason for the Brezhnev state not searching for the bodies can be seen in the nature of the execution of the tsar’s family. In 1977, Brezhnev and the Soviet Union celebrated the sixtieth anniversary of the October Revolution. Brezhnev declared that ‘The victory of October was the main event of the 20th century’ during a period which saw the revolution once again gain prominence on 75
the public stage following its sidelining by the Soviet victory in WW2. The discovery of the Romanov 76
remains and the subsequent investigations would reveal and confirm the mutilated remains of the tsar’s children. The violent nature of the royal family’s deaths had the potential to turn the public’s attention back to historically volatile events of 1917 and the subsequent lives lost under the Soviet Union. The Romanov remains thus served no useful purpose in the legitimisation of the Soviet Union 77
which the Brezhnev regime was promoting; unlike Krushchev, the spirit of academic investigation was not a priority. The absence of the corpses was endorsed by the Kremlin, ensuring that no popular debate about the last royal family would be initiated by their discovery.
However, in June 1979, the Romanovs were discovered. Geli Ryabov, a famous filmmaker and author with high up connections in the Kremlin, had long been fascinated by the mystery of the
74 Massie, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, 30.
75 Igor Torbakov, “Celebrating Red October: A Story of the Ten Anniversaries of the Russian
Revolution, 1927-2017.”, Scando-Slavica, vol. 64, no.1 (2018): 7–30, 18.
76 Anna Lively and Matthew Rendle, “Inspiring a ‘fourth Revolution’? The Modern Revolutionary
Tradition and the Problems Surrounding the Commemoration of 1917 in 2017 in Russia.”, Historical
Research, vol. 90, no. 247 (2017): 230–249, 233.
remains which led him to seek out Alexander Avdonin. Avdonin was a resident of Yekaterinburg who had researched the matter; following reassurances from Ryabov that they would not be caught, the pair decided to try and locate the royal remains. Under the cover of conducting a ‘geological expedition’, the men led a small team to where they believed the remains to be buried. Their 78
excavation came across remnants of bones and three skulls; Avdonin and Ryabov assumed these to be the Romanov remains. When the bones were excavated again twelve years later, DNA testing would prove this to be true. The two men removed the three skulls and bone fragments, and then refilled the grave, even going as far to relay the grass on top. One of the skulls had notable gold 79
teeth; the men presumed this was Nicholas due to historical reports of his dental conditions and the expense needed to make such gold fillings. The smallest skull was presumed to be that of Alexei and the other, to be one of the four daughters. Avdonin decided to keep the skull assigned to Nicholas and Ryabov took the other two skulls back with him to Moscow where he tried to use his connections with the Interior Ministry to organise a scientific investigation. He was rebuked and the skulls remained underneath his bed for the next twelve months. A year after their discovery, Avdonin and Ryabov became worried about the consequences of their findings and subsequently agreed that they needed to return the skulls. Ryabov stated that he had been told by a friend within the KGB that he should do so. The two men returned to the exact burial site and reburied the skulls and bone fragments where 80
they had found them the previous year. Therefore, in July 1980, the first reburial of the Romanovs took place.
Avdonin and Ryabov were citizens of the Soviet Union, an authoritarian regime with far reaching powers to control the public and private lives of their citizens and therefore, the actions of these two 81
men in their reburying of the royal family can be seen to emulate the desires of the state. Avdonin and Ryabov, through reburying the Romanovs, made sure that the mystery of the location of the remains persisted and therefore, the state was victorious in its implicit control of the bodies. Indeed, within Yekaterinburg, citizens were aware of the dangers of investigating the location of the Romanov
78 Slater, The Many Deaths of Tsar Nicholas II, 16. 79 Massie, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, 40. 80 Slater, The Many Deaths of Tsar Nicholas II, 20. 81 Borneman, Death of the Father, 1.
remains, Avdonin recalled that ‘people were afraid to talk’. Ryabov convinced Avdonin to help him 82
find the remains through reassuring him that he had connections with the Ministry of Interior which would provide them with protection if they needed it. The fear that the Soviet state exerted over the 83
subject of the Romanov bodies is clear; in an atmosphere of repression that had significantly
increased since the end of Krushchev’s rule , the two men were arguably right to keep their mission 84
secret.
It is interesting to note that while much attention has been paid to the role of acknowledging and reburying prominent dead bodies for authoritarian regimes, it is equally valuable to examine those regimes who wished for notable remains to stay hidden. The Soviet state rejected these traditionally defined politically useful tools , choosing to vanish away the Romanovs rather than make them 85
eternal for political gains. A similar case in regards to the remains of victims of the Argentinian 86
dictatorships in the late 1900s has also been observed, with the regime deliberately trying to hide the crimes of their repression. The 1980 reburial thus demonstrates that the state had not gone under a 87
period of political transformation. As shown above, the attitudes of the Bolsheviks towards the Romanov deaths and their bodies continued throughout the Soviet regime, including during the Brezhnev era in which the remains were discovered.
Despite the reach of the Soviet state, the values imposed on the Romanov dead bodies in this time period varied significantly between the discoverers and the regime. For Avdonin and Ryabov, the Romanov remains represented the end to a lifelong mission to discover their location in the name of science. Avdonin stated that ‘We wanted to do this in order to restore one of the pages of our history’ and they feared that if the Soviet government discovered the remains that they would be ‘liquidated’. 88
These scholarly values came into conflict with the regime that imposed negative values upon the remains. This repression of scientific discovery is reflective of the wider nature of the Soviet Union;
82 Massie, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, 33. 83 King, Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 384.
84 William Tompson, The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev, Oxfordshire, England: Routledge, 2014, 105. 85 Uhall, The End of the Affair with Life, 3.
86 Schoeberlein, Doubtful Dead Fathers, 201. 87 Garibian, Seeking the Dead Among the Living, 45. 88 Massie, The Romanovs: The Final Chapter, 34.
under Brezhnev, it was clear to those in the academic field that they should not conduct research or pursue interests that were not expressly approved or promoted by the state. The reburial for Avdonin 89
and Ryabov thus represented submission to the Soviet government. Unmarked, in the middle of Koptyaki forest, Avdonin and Ryabov’s choice of location ensured that the Romanovs remained the same status that they had been since 1918.
Finally, a religious aspect was present in the first reburial of the Romanovs despite the
subjugation of religion throughout the Soviet Union. Under Brezhnev, initially the strong anti-religious stance of Krushchev was lessened. However, as the Brezhnev’s rule extended, atheist programs and repression of religious figures remained, displaying a continued fundamental opposition to religion from the Communist party. The box, in which Avdonin and Ryabov placed the skulls and remnants 90
before burying them, had an icon placed on top with an inscription from Matthew 24, ‘He who endures to the end will be saved’. Despite their scientific motivations, this insight reveals that Orthodox 91
traditions were still present within these individuals. The inherent link between the tsars and
Orthodoxy is undoubtable and indeed, the KGB cited baptisms taking place outside the Ipatiev House, testifying to the symbolism of the tsars as a rallying point for Orthodox believers. Furthermore, the Russian Orthodox Church Outside of Russia had long been promoting the idea of the last Romanov family as martyred saints abroad, campaigning against the communist regime through highlighting the sanctity of the last royal family. They would canonise the Romanovs one year later in 1981. 92
Therefore, in digging up the Romanov remains, Avdonin and Ryabov also unearthed a symbol of Orthodoxy. Through reburying it, they conformed to the Soviet subjugation of religion.
The 1980 reburial of the Romanovs has not received significant academic analysis, yet this chapter has demonstrated the value of doing so. Through the two men’s discovery, we see the beginning of the debate that would come to define the Romanov remains; for whom did the authority to control the bones and thus the commemoration of the imperial family lie. Within this period, the
89 Tompson, The Soviet Union Under Brezhnev, 98.
90 John Anderson, Religion, State and Politics in the Soviet Union and Successor States, Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1994, 68.
91 King, Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 388. 92 Ibid, 379.
Soviet state had sovereignty over the dead bodies of the royal family and the broader remembrance of the Romanovs, as exemplified in the fear that promoted Avdonin and Ryabov to bury their discovery. The Soviet government did not need the Romanov remains which served no political purpose for them and thus they made a significant effort to permanently consign them to the past. This attitude
continued from the Bolsheviks through to Brezhnev, symbolising a lack of political transformation. As such, the 1980 reburial served to maintain the existing political discourse around the remains. The reburial saw the triumph of the Soviet state over scientific discovery yet also the continued religious presence of Orthodoxy, marking an inherent link between its resurgence and the Romanov remains. This re-emergence of Orthodoxy would come to dominate areas of the discourse surrounding the royal bones. Finally, it is important to note that in the wider field of remembrance, of which the Romanov bodies were part, this era saw the Soviet state dominate, subjugating the private actors of not only Avdonin and Ryabov, but also the popular efforts of some media sources and monarchist sympathisers.
Chapter 2 - The Exhumation
The exhumation of the Romanov bones in 1991 and the discourses that followed are the subject of the next section of this work. The main actors within this period were the new Russian state under Yeltsin, the Russian Orthodox Church, the popular imagination and the Sverdlovsk regional government who all competed for the right to control the bones. This post-Soviet period saw the remains being brought into the public realm, significantly progressing from their secretive discovery in 1979 and testifying to the change undergone within the political system. Indeed, the state did not have sole authority over the fate of the remains and their commemoration. Moreover, it will be proven that the new government saw inherent political value in the bones, displaying a clear progression from its Soviet predecessors. The actions of the above mentioned actors shall be analyzed once again, in order to ascertain who had dominance within the competitive remembrance of the Romanov remains. It shall be shown that these competative discourses were reflective of the political transformation within Russia and of the identified actors’ efforts to build a new post-Soviet identity.
Eight years after Avdonin and Ryabov reburied the Romanov remains, Ryabov gave an interview to Moscow News. On 10th April 1989, the article entitled ‘The Earth Yields up its Secrets’ was published in which Ryabov revealed that he had found the location of the royal family's last resting place. The newly formed Russian government gave permission for the remains to be 93
exhumed in 1991. Seven years of in depth forensic investigations and confrontation with the Russian Orthodox Church (ROC) ensued, resulting in the royal family finally being reburied in 1998. All this took place on the backdrop of President Yeltsin’s struggle to form a new Russian nation after the collapse of the Soviet Union.
In his interview, Ryabov stated two key notions that would come to define the journey of the Romanov remains, from their exhumation until their 1998 reburial. Firstly, Ryabov declared that he would not reveal the exact location of the bodies until they were promised a proper Christian burial . 94 93 Carol J. Williams, “Putting the Romanovs to Rest?”, Los Angeles Times, 22nd January 1998,
https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1998-jan-22-mn-10928-story.html, accessed 18/06/2020.
Immediately, the remains of the Romanov family were associated with Orthodoxy and the revival of it within the public space, fitting into a wider context of increasing religious freedom under Gorbachev. The remains would become symbolic of a resurgence of Orthodox power within popular society and potentially over the government itself. Ryabov also stated ‘the whole nation’ needed the burial of the 95
imperial remains, in order to confront the crimes committed after 1917. Therefore, the idea of national healing through reburying the Romanovs and using this to highlight the sins committed by the Soviet regime was present from the beginning and as this analysis will show, the new government supported this discourse. It is also telling of the political climate that Ryabov felt confident enough to give a named interview with a prominent newspaper; no longer were the Romanovs the restricted subject that motivated Ryabov to conceal his secret as he had done in 1980. With this publication, the fate of the imperial remains emerged from the private realm of Avdonin and Ryabov, into the public sphere.
However, not everyone believed the validity of Ryabov’s account and this conspiratorial discourse continued to be present from the moment that the subject of the Romanov remains
re-emerged. The ROC supported publication, ‘Tsar-Kokolo’, published an article in 1990, entitled ‘The Forgery’ in which it was claimed that Ryabov was a KGB agent, deliberately trying to conceal the truth; that the Romanov bodies were fakes planted by the Cheka in order to cover up the true nature of their executions, which were purported to be a Jewish ritual murder. From the very beginning of the 96
Romanov bodies’ journey, the rhetoric that surrounded them was defined by the continued presence of the ROC. Under Gorbachev, Orthodoxy became increasingly prominent on the public stage, aiding the movements of perestroika, alongside the official protection of freedom of religion. This 97
publication displays the ROC using this newly opened space to try and control the narrative of the Romanov deaths. The piece also highlights the emergence of a dominant anti-semitic narrative that surrounded the final days of the tsar, that still exists to this day. The wider Russian public at this time did not display overt anti-semitism; there were pervasive stereotypes but the majority did not blame Jews for the trials faced by their country. Yet, as seen in this publication, the legacy of Soviet 98 95 King, Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 390.
96 King, Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 390.
97 Knox, Russian Society and the Orthodox Church, 57-58.
98 James Gibson, “Understandings of Anti-Semitism in Russia: An Analysis of the Politics of
persecution of the Jewish people remained and factions of the ROC heightened this. Therefore, the 99
discovery of these remains formed a threat to the conservative Orthodox discourse surrounding Judaism.
For two years after Ryabov’s article, amateur archaeologists descended into the forests
surrounding Yekaterinburg in order to try and find the location of the imperial bones , highlighting the 100
power of the Romanov remains in capturing the popular imagination. The Kremlin, however, concerned by the revolutions taking place across the Soviet Union, did not get involved; this would significantly change under Yeltsin.
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union, Yeltsin came to power on 12th June 1991, in the first democratic elections of the new Russian Federation, riding on a popular wave of hope through a strong message of rejecting the Soviet system. As the new president took control, he faced a key problem of forming a national identity for a political and geographic entity that had never existed before. Russia had never been a nation state, with scholars arguing that the Russian imperial empire and the Soviet Union had been built at the cost of a unified Russian identity. Having repudiated the 101
Soviet Union, Yeltsin disbanded the Communist Party in 1991, but following a court ruling, the party was allowed to reform in October of that year. The party would become a strong opposing force to the reforms and ideals of the new president. It is important to note that throughout Yeltsin’s rule, these 102
Communist Party voices would be prominent; accusing the leader of giving up the power of the Soviet Union, bowing to the West and turning Russia into a mafia state. As such, Yeltsin was leading a 103
highly fractured nation, making his national identity building efforts even more important for the government to not only achieve its vision of Russia’s new future, but to ensure they remained in power.
99 Nickolai Butkevich, “The New Face of State-Sponsored Anti-Semitism in Russia.”, East European
Jewish Affairs, vol. 32, no.1 (2002): 138–148, 143.
100 Slater, The Many Deaths of Tsar Nicholas II, 25.
101 Vera Tolz, “Conflicting ‘Homeland Myths’ and Nation-State Building in Postcommunist Russia.”
Slavic Review, vol. 57, no.2 (1998): 267–294, 267.
102 Herbert J. Ellison, Boris Yeltsin and Russia’s Democratic Transformation, Seattle: University of
Washington Press, 2006, 69.
After Yeltsin’s election, the chairman of the Sverdlovsk Soviet, the region in which
Yekaterinburg was situated, approached the new president to gain his permission to exhume the Romanov bones. The governor, Eduard Rossel, was granted his wish. The reasons for Yeltsin’s gvoernment’s agreement to this must be examined. Firstly, the new regime needed support; this was key as the impetus for significant political change had not come through a people’s revolution but enacted by the ruling elite themselves and so popular legitimacy needed to be earnt. Following 104
Ryabov’s article, popular interest in the last imperial family had significantly increased: tsarist memorabilia was sought after, popular written works on Nicholas II were widely circulated and the mystery of their remains continued to be featured in the media. This heightened nostalgia can be 105
seen to stem from a popular longing for a golden imperial past, defined by the gentility and harmony of the royal family. They represented a peaceful life that was perceived to have been taken away from 106
the Russians by the Soviet system. After years of censorship surrounding the tsars, the novelty of being able to discuss and study them surely played an additional role in their popularity. Some have argued that this is the real reason for the Romanovs’ popularity, devoid of any real attachment to the family. Whilst this is hard to quantify, it is undeniable that the last royal family experienced a popular 107
resurgence and thus their remains held value for a government seeking popular support. 108
The Romanov remains also provided a useful political tool in a physical embodiment of the crimes of the Soviet Union and thus had the potential to be a high profile symbol which promoted remembrance and condemnation of this repression. Indeed, despite the end of the Soviet Union, an equally significant part of the population and the nation’s elites were campaigning for a positive
104 Stephen White, “Soviet Nostalgia and Russian Politics.”, Journal of Eurasian Studies, vol 1, no.1
(2010): 1–9, 3.
105 Judith Devlin, Slavophiles and Commissars: Enemies of Democracy in Modern Russia,
Basingstoke: Macmillan, New York St Martin’s Press, 1999, 76.
106 Kathy Rousselet, “The Russian Orthodox Church and Reconciliation with the Soviet Past”, History,
Memory and Politics in Central and Eastern Europe Memory Games, edited by Georges Mink and Laure Neumayer, London: Palgrave Macmillan UK, 2013, 48.
107 Davies, Soviet History, 3.
108 James A. Janack, “The Future’s Foundation in a Contested Past: Nostalgia and Dystalgia in the
1996 Russian Presidential Campaign.”, Southern Communication Journal, vol. 65, no.1 (1999): 34–48, 45.
reassessment of the Soviet era, rejecting the message of perestroika. Consequently, the remains 109
served as a useful tool to combat positive associations with Soviet rule, displaying the violent nature of the Romanovs’ deaths and the execution of children. It should not be assumed, however, that the government concertedly sought the discovery of the remains, instead this justification displays as to why they agreed for the government to be involved in their exhumation; taking advantage of a situation that independently presented itself.
Responding to the continuing presence of those who defended the Soviet Union, the Romanov bodies also had the potential to give the government a physical expression of Russia’s past that was not associated with the Soviet system. They displayed the imperial history of the country; presenting an alternate past for the Russian nation to take pride in. As the new era began, the government deliberately sought out figures and aspects of Russian history to help redefine the Russian nation outside of Soviet rule. Moreover, it has been suggested that Yeltsin personally agreed to the 110
exhumation in order to atone for his approval of the destruction of the Ipatiev House , when he was 111
the governor of the local soviet. It seems unlikely that this would have been the main reason for supporting the exhumation. Yet, it is worth acknowledging that Yeltsin did have a personal connection to Yekaterinburg, growing up surrounded by the Romanov myths and thus it is possible that he also had a personal interest in pursuing the exhumation.
The actual exhumation of the bones took place over just two days, from 11th to 13th July 1991, only one month after Yeltsin’s election. Consequently, we can view it as one of the first nation building efforts of the new government. Eduard Rossel granted archaeological experts one day to gather an excavation team. Nine sets of human remains were unearthed and taken back for forensic testing in 112
Yekaterinburg. The rushed nature of the exhumation would later come to haunt the legitimacy of the forensic results, as scientists complained of the mishandling of the bones and incorrect cataloguing. 113 109 Thomas Sherlock, Historical Narratives in the Soviet Union and Post-Soviet Russia: Destroying the
Settled Past, Creating an Uncertain Future, New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007, 150.
110 Miguel Vázquez Liñán, “History as a Propaganda Tool in Putin’s Russia.”, Communist and
Post-Communist Studies, vol. 43, no.2 (2010): 167–178, 172.
111 Slater, The Many Deaths of Tsar Nicholas II, 25. 112 King, Wilson, The Fate of the Romanovs, 400. 113 Ibid, 420.
