The funeral last week of the last Czar of Russia and his family, held in the austerely beautiful confines of St. Petersburg's Peter and Paul Fortress, was originally intended to be an act of national repentance for 80 years of death and division. It turned out to be a symbol of the dominant feature of Russian politics today: the fine art of cutting a deal.
For the priests and the President in the cathedral last Friday, the small coffins in front of them were not those of Nicholas II, his wife, three of his children and four faithful retainers. (The remains of two children, Alexei and Maria, have yet to be found.) In the view of the church, the boxes draped with the imperial flag contained the skeletons of anonymous victims of the political terror that engulfed Russia after the overthrow of autocracy in 1917. The head of the Russian Orthodox Church, Alexi II, who has been accused by former dissidents of collaboration with the Soviet-era KGB, expresses doubts about the authenticity of the bones, despite positive DNA tests. He calls them the "Yekaterinburg remains," a reference to the town in the Urals where the imperial family was killed in the early hours of July 17, 1918. President Boris Yeltsin--who as Communist Party chief there in 1977 had destroyed the site of the massacre--denounced the murder during his funeral address but stuck to the official church description of the remains as innocent and unnamed victims.
Yeltsin's mere presence at the rites was an unexpected act of political daring. The idea of national repentance for the murders was dropped months ago after the Patriarch withheld his blessing, and most leading politicians, with the exception of the ambitious Alexander Lebed and opposition leader Grigori Yavlinsky, found other things to do that Friday. Yeltsin's sudden decision to appear achieved the effect he so clearly enjoys, catching his rivals off balance and making them look foolish. This time, however, his about-face may have been inspired by more profound considerations. The day before the funeral, the one living Russian with any claims to sainthood, Dmitri Likhachev, 91, spoke on the phone with the President and urged him to attend. Yeltsin is reputed to be in awe of Likhachev, a specialist in early Russian literature and a survivor of one of the worst of the early Soviet political prisons, where in previous centuries the Orthodox Church sent its dissidents. Soon after the call, Yeltsin announced he would travel to St. Petersburg, and during the ceremony Likhachev stood just behind the President.
Surviving members of the Romanov family--who had come from addresses as diverse as Paris; Oakland, Calif.; New South Wales; and East Sussex--kept a low profile. Those who spoke Russian did so in an archaic St. Petersburg accent that has all but disappeared. Some, such as the mayor of Palm Beach, Fla., Paul Ilinsky, never learned the language. They were restrained in their comments on Nicholas and made no claim to any stake in Russia's political future.