There are no more secrets for the investigation. Why are scientists conducting a new examination of the remains of the royal family? Why the Russian Orthodox Church does not want to recognize the Ekaterinburg remains as royal ones

In the coming days, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church will discuss whether the remains of the royal family found in the 20th century should be considered authentic. On the eve of the cathedral, the secretary of the commission for the study of the remains, Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov), stated that the murder of the royal family was ritual, which aroused the indignation of representatives of the Jewish communities.

“We have the most serious attitude towards the version of a ritual murder. A significant part of the church commission has no doubt that this murder was ritual,” said Bishop Tikhon (Shevkunov) of Yegoryevsk, who is called “Putin’s confessor,” at a conference on the murder of Nicholas II and his family in 1918.

The conference “The Case of the Murder of the Royal Family: New Examinations and Archival Materials” was dedicated to the preliminary results of examinations on the authenticity of the royal remains found at the end of the 20th century near Yekaterinburg.

The final decision on whether the church recognizes the authenticity of these remains must be made by the Council of Bishops, but exactly when this decision will be made has not yet been said. Russian President Vladimir Putin will also visit the cathedral that opens on Wednesday, presidential press secretary Dmitry Peskov said on Tuesday.

The Investigative Committee, which is currently conducting an investigation into the “Ekaterinburg remains,” said it will check the version of the ritual nature of this murder. After this, the chairman of the Jewish communities of Russia, Alexander Boroda, said that he regretted the department’s decision.

Beard noted that in the 90s, the prosecutor’s office “confirmed the unsubstantiated” version of the ritual murder of the royal family by Jews. “It is regrettable that it is being raised again, presenting the slanderous libel as a version worthy of verification,” he added.

Where did the version of ritual murder come from and why is it so important to the church?

What ritual are we talking about?

The last Russian Emperor Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna and five children were shot in Yekaterinburg in 1918. The execution was led by revolutionary Yakov Yurovsky. It is his memories that Bishop Tikhon refers to when speaking about the ritual murder of the family.

“The fact that the emperor, even if he had abdicated, was killed in this way, the fact that the victims were distributed according to the killers, as evidenced by Yurovsky, and that many wanted to be regicides. This already suggests that for many it was a special ritual.” , - said the bishop.

The version that the murder of the royal family was a kind of “ritual” appeared during the first investigation, which, on the orders of the White Guards, was carried out by Nikolai Sokolov and Mikhail Diterichs. It was first voiced in Dieterichs’ book in 1922, historian Anatoly Stepanov, who was authorized by the church commission to publish conversations with experts investigating the authenticity of the “Ekaterinburg remains,” told the BBC Russian Service.

"Several facts support this version. First of all, this is the assumption of General Dieterichs that the heads of the royal martyrs - all or just the sovereign, heir and queen - were separated from the bodies and taken to Moscow in alcohol-preserved flasks by Philip Goloshchekin, the coordinator of this murder. About This was only indirect evidence,” said Stepanov.

However, historians still do not have clear evidence that the heads were actually separated. Thus, at the conference “The Case of the Murder of the Royal Family,” the former head of the FSB archives, Vasily Khristoforov, stated that “there is not a single document, not a single indirect indication of the participants in these events about the beheading.” According to him, it is unlikely that the heads were separated after the murder: the Soviet authorities did not use the method of cutting off heads as a “method for collecting evidence.”

What do the Jews have to do with it?

There are two reasons why some researchers of the circumstances of the death of the family of Nicholas II conclude that there was a Kabbalistic conspiracy against the monarchy.

The first is the identity of those who led the murder. “Yakov Yurovsky was an ethnic Jew, but was a baptized Lutheran Christian. Filipp Goloshchekin was a Jew. There is no information that he was baptized. But in relation to other participants, it is not the department of the Federation of Jewish Communities to deal with this,” says Stepanov.

Image copyright Getty Images Image caption The room where the royal family was executed

The second is the mysterious symbols found on the basement wall in the house where the royal family was shot. The signs were discovered by investigator Sokolov during the first investigation. “He wrote that these were mysterious signs next to some numbers. He could not decipher them,” Stepanov said.

After this, in 1925, in exile, a well-known lover of the East and the occult, Mikhail Skaryatin, published a brochure in which he offered his decoding of the inscription - “Here, by order of secret forces, the Tsar was sacrificed for the destruction of Russia. All nations are informed about this.”

“Skaryatin called the signs on the wall Kabbalistic. This is where the version about Kabbalists (adherents of the esoteric Jewish movement) came from,” Stepanov said.

At the same time, none of the commissions in the case of the murder of the royal family came to the conclusion about the ritual nature of this crime; The involvement of Kabbalists in the execution was also not proven.

Who will put an end to the dispute?

On the part of the secular authorities, the Investigative Committee will check the version of ritual murder. For this purpose, a psychological and historical examination will be carried out with the participation of Russian scientists, archivists and representatives of the church, said investigator Marina Molodtsova, who is leading the case of the murder of the royal family.

It is unclear how long the investigation will last: the Investigative Committee has not yet completed its examination of the authenticity of the “Ekaterinburg remains.” The investigative committee's verification of the version of the ritual is part of a larger investigation into the remains.

Historian Anatoly Stepanov believes that the investigation should consider all versions of the murder of the royal family. “The ritual version is being discussed because these facts have not been refuted or confirmed,” he said.

The scientific director of the State Archives, Sergei Mironenko, who took part in the investigation into the murder of the royal family, called the version of a ritual murder “deliberately false.” “Do you believe that Jews use the blood of babies to knead matzah?” - he said.

The Church has already investigated this issue: 20 years ago: The Holy Synod instructed a theological commission to study assumptions about the ritual murder of the royal family, and the answer was negative, Protodeacon Andrei Kuraev told the BBC Russian Service.

“Church experts themselves said that there is no reason to assume such terrible stories. I think that now the documents do not provide grounds for such exotic versions,” he said.

Why is this important to the church?

“The emperor, even after abdicating, remained certainly a symbolic, sacred figure. The murder of the tsar and his family, putting the last end to the existence of the three-hundred-year-old Romanov dynasty, hated by the new government, was a very special matter, carrying a ritual, symbolic content for many,” said Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov.

The issue of recognition of the remains is “painful for the patriarchy,” says Kuraev. According to him, from yesterday’s conference it becomes clear that both the Patriarch and Bishop Tikhon consider the remains to be genuine, but the question arises of how “the least painless way to make this conviction common throughout the Church.”

Image copyright Sergey Vlasov/patriarchia.ru Image caption Patriarch Kirill and Bishop Tikhon at the conference on the “Ekaterinburg remains”

The issue of recognition of the remains by the church was raised 20 years ago: in 1998, after five years of examinations, the government commission to study the authenticity of the “Ekaterinburg remains” declared that they were genuine. The remains of Nicholas II and members of his family were buried in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg.

The Russian Orthodox Church refused to recognize the “Ekaterinburg remains” and announced the possible falsification of research results. Patriarch Alexy II said that the Russian Orthodox Church does not recognize the remains due to the fact that representatives of the church were not allowed to investigate the case. The grave of the royal family in the Peter and Paul Fortress is still not venerated by Orthodox Christians, although the emperor and his family were recognized as saints in the early 2000s.

The case about the authenticity of the remains of the royal family was reopened in 2015 at the request of the Russian Orthodox Church. An investigative committee took up the matter, and a church commission was also created, which included Bishop Tikhon. As part of the new investigation, the bodies of Nicholas II and Tsarina Alexandra were exhumed to establish the authenticity of other remains found in 2007.

At a conference on the “Ekaterinburg” remains, Patriarch Kirill said that he discussed the issue of recognition of the remains with President Putin. “I have formulated our conditions. The whole process must be repeated again, and from the very beginning the church should not only observe, it should be included in it,” the patriarch said.

“There is an obvious conflict between this history and the trend of the current pontificate to declare the patriarchal position infallible,” says Andrei Kuraev.

According to him, representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church do not expect the investigative committee to confirm the version of the ritual murder of the royal family. “This is all we need to say: we hear the aspirations and bewilderments of our people and therefore we protect your interests and answer all questions,” Kuraev said.

Illustration copyright Yuri Smityuk/TASS

- Vladimir Nikolaevich, why was the case, closed back in 2008, reopened?

His Holiness Patriarch Kirill appealed to the government with a request to resolve the issue of conducting additional examinations of the remains of Maria and Alexei, stored in the Russian State Archives, where they were transferred by me after the termination of the previous criminal case. At the direction of the Chairman of the Investigative Committee of Russia, it was resumed and on September 23, the remains of Nicholas II and Empress Alexandra Feodorovna were exhumed in order to conduct additional genetic research.

Is it really true that the scientific laboratories where numerous previous examinations were carried out did not preserve tissue samples of the remains?

In 1998, before the burial of the imperial family, at the suggestion of Patriarch Alexy, tissue samples were taken from the remains of all nine people. They were in storage until 2007. When in 2007 the question arose about identifying the newly found remains of Alexei and Maria, all these fragments were used for additional examinations. They were carried out anew, literally “from scratch,” because over the past years fundamentally new research methods have appeared. In the late 90s, based on remains of such age and such preservation, scientists could only study mitochondrial DNA (passed through the female line. - Ed.). And by 2007, they were already able to study the Y chromosomes, which are transmitted through the male line.

This is a more complex, but also more informative examination. It is not often encountered in judicial practice, because requires a lot of time and highly qualified experts. Unique scientific research was carried out by four independent groups of geneticists - Evgeniy Ivanovich Rogaev from the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, the genetic laboratory of the Sverdlovsk Regional Bureau of Forensic Medicine, the US Army Identification Laboratory and the laboratory of Walter Parson from the Innsbruck Medical University in Austria. And they unequivocally proved that these were the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and his sister, Grand Duchess Maria.

- By that time, you had also discovered samples of the blood of Emperor Nicholas?

Yes, the shirt and headdress (bowler hat) of Nicholas II, who was wounded by a fanatic policeman in 1891 during a trip to Japan, were found in the State Hermitage. By the way, this is where the expression “Japanese policeman” came from. Traces of a cut are clearly visible on the bowler, and traces of blood on the shirt. The results of the examination were sensational: the genetic material of the remains and blood coincided at 99 and 39 nines after the decimal point. Such a coincidence between two people who are strangers to each other could be possible if the population of the Earth was expressed as a number with 40 zeros - this is simply impossible to imagine.

How were they able to identify the Grand Duchesses? After all, their genetic material could not show which of them is Tatyana, which is Olga, and which is Anastasia?

Each person differs from another by an individual “genetic passport”. Therefore, each of Nikolai’s four daughters has its own genetic make-up. But geneticists really can't tell which one is which. Anthropologists define these questions. In the 90s, a complete anthropological study was carried out, in which our outstanding specialists, Viktor Nikolaevich Zvyagin and Sergei Alekseevich Nikitin, who mastered methods of graphic reconstruction of the face from the bones of the skull, participated. This became possible because the remains of the emperor, family members and associates were preserved quite well. These were complete skeletons, and the front part of all, except for the cook Kharitonov, made it possible to recreate their appearance. Special studies were conducted to determine age, height, and diseases. Photos helped. In 1917, the princesses suffered from measles, and then their heads were shaved. And they took a funny photo - they took a photo from the front and from the back of the head. The Tsarevich also cut his hair to support his sisters. In these photos there are all five of them and they seem to ask: “Guess which one of us is which?” The outlines of the heads are clearly visible in the photographs; the photographs are of high quality, so it was absolutely impossible to confuse the shapes of the princesses’ skulls.

But doubts were expressed about the remains of Anastasia - allegedly it was not possible to accurately determine whether it was she or Maria. How did you find the answer?

Yes, we were told: in your conclusion you incorrectly indicate Anastasia’s height, she was small and plump. But according to the examinations it turned out that way, but there was no evidence. And the year before last, in the State Archive of the Russian Federation there was an exhibition dedicated to the work of the investigation in this case. It presented everything that was connected with the death of the royal family. A collection of relics was brought from the Holy Trinity Monastery (Jordanville, USA - Ed.), including items of clothing of members of the royal family. The fact is that after the execution, some material evidence was distributed around the world; relatives of the royal family were given some things, icons. Each piece of clothing had individual embroidered monograms. Among the items was the skirt of Grand Duchess Anastasia. In the process of preparing the exhibition, I asked an archive employee of approximately the same height as anthropologists determined Anastasia’s height to try her on. It turned out that it fit perfectly. Apparently, during the family’s stay in Tobolsk and Yekaterinburg, Anastasia, who was only 16 years old in 1917, managed to grow up. And now there is material confirmation of this.

Dispel the myths

Why did the question now arise about additional examinations of the remains of Maria and Alexei? And why was it necessary to exhume their parents?

The remains, as I already said, were kept in the State Archives. This could not go on forever; according to all canons, they must be buried. But representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church have repeatedly stated that there are certain doubts about the authenticity of the remains, since church scientists were not involved in the examination at one time. The Church would like to determine its participation in this procedure before the burial. Another question arose: there are long-standing legends that after the execution the sovereign’s head was brought to the Kremlin, to Lenin.

This “tale” is also in the book of a prominent monarchist, Lieutenant General Mikhail Diterichs, the organizer of excavations at the site of the supposed burial of the royal family in Ganina Yama, which were carried out by investigator Nikolai Sokolov. Dieterichs wrote: “there are jokes that they allegedly brought the head of the Tsar and will exhibit it in cinemas.” It all sounded like black humor, but it was picked up and there was talk of ritual murder. Already in our time there were publications in the media that this head was allegedly discovered. We checked this information, but could not find the author of the note. The information is completely “yellow” and indecent, but, nevertheless, these rumors have been circulating for many years, especially among emigrants abroad. Opinions were also expressed that representatives of the Soviet secret services once opened the burial and brought something there. Therefore, the patriarch proposed to conduct research again to confirm or debunk these legends. On September 23, small fragments of the skulls of the emperor and empress were taken for this purpose.

- Why didn’t you do this earlier?

Because before 1998, genetics methods required a fairly large amount of material. Sorry, but I couldn’t bring myself to grind the sovereign’s skull into powder to satisfy someone’s curiosity. Now research methods are more gentle; they require much less bone material. Although, of course, everything depends on the qualifications of the experts - only a specialist of the highest class can work this way, of which there are few in the world. State Prize laureate Evgeniy Rogaev, who is now officially conducting the examination I appointed, is a specialist of precisely this class.

You entrusted a new examination to the same Evgeniy Rogaev. Will the Russian Orthodox Church have no reason to doubt its results now?

I hope not, since now the selection of samples was carried out with the participation of several representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church - Metropolitan of St. Petersburg and Ladoga - Administrator of the Moscow Patriarchate Barsanuphius, Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, rector of the Peter and Paul Cathedral Archimandrite Alexander (Fedorov) and others. In their presence, the samples were packed in special numbered bags of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation. They were signed by me, Metropolitan Barsanuphius and Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin. Bone tissue samples for research were duplicated. I gave one to Evgeny Rogaev, the second to the Moscow Patriarchate for safekeeping. And there is an agreement that representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church can be present at all stages of research in the laboratory. This guarantees complete openness of the examination. We have nothing to hide, neither before nor now. But if the church is not satisfied with the progress of the examination, it has every opportunity to conduct control examinations of the samples transferred to it.

- What prevented you from involving representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church in previous studies?

Apparently, the negotiations simply did not reach this stage. The final stage of the investigation was short-lived: the main research on the shirt began in September 2008, and the investigation was completed in early January 2009. I reported the results of the work to Patriarch Alexy II. He then sent a representative to Yekaterinburg for a conference on December 5, 2008, at which we officially announced the results. A week before the conference, the patriarch found time to meet with me, although he was already ill then. He was always interested in issues related to the Ekaterinburg remains, but soon died suddenly, and the dialogue with the church was interrupted for a while. While the new Patriarch was elected, while he delved into these matters, time passed, and by that time the investigation was already completed.

Fake or original?

It is known that you answered 10 questions posed by Patriarch Alexy, but you were not able to answer all of them then. Why?

- These questions were formulated back in 1995. I always saw them in front of me and organized expert research in such a way as to give informed answers to them. I am often accused of being lame in my answers. But no one ever writes long letters of 50 pages to people of this level. Another thing is that a short letter on such an important topic requires appendices. And we handed over the following appendices to the patriarch - two volumes of various documents. The conversation with Alexy II lasted more than three hours. The Patriarch asked many questions and responded kindly to our answers. But for a number of questions we could not give an answer or a complete answer. The most serious question was - Where are the remains of Alexei and Maria? We couldn't answer it then. But although the criminal case was dropped, the search continued.

- Who financed this search?

- We, roughly speaking, spent money, organized expeditions on a voluntary basis throughout all these years - from 1998 to 2007. Although the remains of Alexei and Maria were found, even now excavations continue on the Old Koptyakovskaya Road. From 1998 to 2000, excavations were carried out in the place where the bodies of members of the royal family and servants were originally brought. At Ganina Yama, where the “White Guard” investigator Nikolai Sokolov did not have time to complete the inspection of the scene, objects were found that undoubtedly belonged to members of the royal family and servants.

For example, emerald, parts of gold jewelry, bullets, shell casings, corset rings - it is clear that the peasant women from the nearby village did not wear corsets. Among the huge number of artifacts, a bullet from a Browning pistol was also found. The examination showed that it was identical to the bullets that were extracted from the remains of the royal family found in Porosenkovo ​​Log. And they were all not just shot from the same brand of pistols, but from the same specific barrel.

Testimonies from participants in the execution helped to find the remains of Alexei and Maria in a different place from the general burial. But there were opinions that the famous “Yurovsky note” was a fake. Were you able to figure it out?

- Some serious scientists told us that the regicide, commandant of the Ipatiev House Yakov Yurovsky had nothing to do with her. That the “note” was written without Yurovsky’s participation by the chief party archivist, keeper of all party secrets, academician Mikhail Pokrovsky, who headed the commission for analyzing the papers of the executed royal family. After his death, pieces of paper were discovered on which this very “Yurovsky’s note” was written in his handwriting. But in a secret folder of papers containing documents about the royal family, which was kept by the chairman of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee Yakov Sverdlov, and after his death by Mikhail Kalinin, there is a document typed on a typewriter that is identical to the manuscript. It contains handwritten notes and corrections. I ordered a handwriting examination, and the experts gave a categorical conclusion that they were made by the hand of two people - Academician Pokrovsky and Yurovsky. Then a typewritten copy of Yurovsky’s speech to the old Bolsheviks in 1934 was examined, and numerous additions made by his hand were also found there. Plus, there is a copy of Yurovsky’s memoirs with his signature, which gave us the right to say that this is his authorship. Even minor errors confirm authenticity. For example, he calls the cook Kharitonov Tikhomirov, says that 12 people were shot, but lists the names of 11. Such errors are characteristic of a person who prepares his memoirs not from other sources, but from memory.

- The academician couldn’t admit them?

- When preparing a fake, Academician Pokrovsky would probably have read Sokolov’s book “The Murder of the Royal Family,” which was published in 1924 in French, and there would not have been such confusion. And when we read the memoirs of other participants in the execution, we see that there is no synchronicity in the records, that is, no one supervised the authors of the memoirs. Now they say: what if some other paper comes along and turns everything upside down? Maybe there will be, but I am absolutely sure that if it was written by a conscientious person, then it will not change anything. During the investigation, the search for documents was unprecedented: All state archives of the Russian Federation and departments, foreign archives and private collections where at least something could be located were carefully studied. Of course, it’s difficult for historians now, because after such searches the archives are scorched earth, and it’s almost impossible to find another document. Since the late 1990s, not a single significant document has been found in the world. While investigating the criminal case, I tried to check all the arguments of my opponents and answer them. In total, the criminal case occupied 26 volumes; the resolution to terminate it alone consisted of 806 pages.

The regicides were anarchists

For many years, there was another popular legend - about Anastasia who survived. Was such a rescue possible?

- At least a hundred people took part in those events - some left, others came... Moreover, mostly these were people of an anarchist type, a kind of free spirit, who at some point called themselves communists. It was a rather clueless team that didn’t really know what to do, apparently they were also drinking heavily there. A team of 11 “red Latvians” was supposed to shoot, and Yurovsky had previously determined who each would shoot at. But then the security officers volunteered, and they did not let the Latvians near, but shot them themselves.

They then tried to determine whether the victims had died. At this time, Empress Demidova’s maid jumps up and says: “The Lord saved me!” They finish her off with a bayonet. Princess Anastasia rises and they finish shooting her. The Tsarevich shows signs of life - he is also being finished off. Then the bodies are handed over to Ermakov’s Red Army squad, but Yurovsky discovers that there are no items on the members of the royal family. He lines up all the participants and says: if I find anything, you will lie down next to them. The corpses are loaded onto a car and brought to the Verkh-Isetsk area. There the dead were thrown into carriages and taken to abandoned mines to Ganina Yama. The squad yells: why weren’t they brought alive, we wanted to shoot ourselves. The situation is conflicting: someone always wants to shoot someone. Ultimately, the corpses are thrown into a mine flooded with water. But it turned out that there was ice in the mine, the corpses were clearly visible and, according to the recollections of one of the security officers, they lay in the water “as if alive.” Who could survive there, get up and leave when everything was on the verge of execution of the execution participants themselves?

- Why were all the corpses transported to another place?

- Yurovsky writes: the place was not suitable, many people saw where we were taking them. He reports to local party bodies that the burial site needs to be changed. They call him distant mines 20 km from Yekaterinburg; corpses had to be transported there through several settlements. At night they leave, but get stuck in the mud, and he understands that they will not have time to get there before dark. In the “note” Yurovsky writes: I gave instructions to burn as many corpses as possible, the rest were buried nearby, right in the middle of the forest road. We knew that the bodies of Maria and Alexei were burned in the same area. But what is nearby - 3 meters, 30 meters, half a kilometer? It was impossible to determine. Of course, the security officers were masters of falsification. But if it was necessary to make a good falsification, Yurovsky’s note looks extremely unconvincing. This could have been done much more convincingly: a memo to Dzerzhinsky with a signature and seal, an incoming and outgoing number - and that’s all. Any fake should look even more convincing than a real document. All the forms and stamps were available, all this could be done. In 2004, we organized the largest excavations of all time. And they didn’t reach the place where Maria and Alexei were burned only 6 meters.

They were found in 2007 by other people who worked in the same way for their own money. It is fortunate that by this time the latest research methods had appeared. And the answer to the patriarch’s question – where are Alexei and Maria? - finally found.

“Parallel” examinations

During the criminal case, some scientists - in particular, our Lev Zhivotovsky and the Japanese Tatsuo Nagai - stated that they had obtained completely different results. Are there currently no similar alternative studies?

- Japanese geneticist Tatsuo Nagai announced that he had examined biological samples of the brother of Emperor Nicholas II, Grand Duke George Alexandrovich. But Tatsuo Nagai never applied to the Russian government and investigative authorities with a request to transfer these samples to him and never officially received them. Experts say the results published by the Japanese professor are incorrect. When experienced geneticists looked at them, they said that a person could not have such a genetic sequence, it would not be a person, but a monster, with such a set of chromosomes he could not live. The second case is that allegedly Russian biologist, State Prize laureate Lev Zhivotovsky and scientist from Stanford University in the USA Alec Knight examined a finger from the remains of the Empress’s sister, Grand Duchess Elizabeth Feodorovna. The genotype of the person whom geneticists presented as “Elizaveta Feodorovna” did not completely coincide with the genotype of the person presented as No. 7 among the “Ekaterinburg remains,” which is why scientists concluded that there was no relationship. They did the right thing, since the genotype from this finger did not coincide with the genotype of the living relatives of the Russian Empress. But according to official research, there is a complete match of mitochondrial DNA from the queen’s remains with her living descendants. Officially, data on the research of Tatsuo Nagai, Lev Zhivotovsky and Alec Knight was not provided to either the investigative authorities or the state. Perhaps the experts were embarrassed to show the weakness of their positions?

Main question

If the Church wanted to replicate the research, where could it turn?

- The Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation is always ready to help the Church. If representatives of the Russian Orthodox Church offer us candidates for experts to conduct the study, we are ready to include them in the work. For me, the only criterion for conducting serious research is - so that the scientist deals with this particular topic, has the appropriate education and qualifications, and is sufficiently well-known in the scientific world. Experts recruited by the investigation to work - world-class and the bar cannot be lowered, the work is too complex and responsible. If the Church is not satisfied with the re-examination, we can create a joint team of scientists - official experts and those proposed by the Church. Of course, all work must be carried out within the framework of criminal procedure legislation.

And if the current examination satisfies the Russian Orthodox Church, can we hope that the issue is closed and the remains will finally be recognized?

- This is not a question for me. But I sincerely hope that the issue will be closed, and this tragic page of our history will finally be turned over.

Position

Ivan Artsishevsky, representative of the Association of Members of the Romanov Family in Russia:

- Initially, the idea of ​​conducting an additional examination to enable the Russian Orthodox Church to clarify its position regarding the remains of the royal family was very correct, and, in my opinion, it was a success. We know that the remains are genuine, but if there were any doubts, this examination, carried out with the participation of representatives of the Church, will dispel them. There is no other way out, and it is better to go for such research, even if this required exhuming the remains in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in order to finally answer all the questions. This is exactly the case when the end justifies the means.

The fate of the imperial family was shrouded in secrets and mysteries for almost a century. For more than eighty years, historians were not even sure that Nicholas II, his wife and children were actually shot.

On October 18, in the Peter and Paul Fortress they are preparing to bury the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria. It seems that history can be put to rest, and the family will finally find peace. But, as before, there are a lot of questions. The Russian Orthodox Church has still not recognized the found remains as royal ones. Komsomolskaya Pravda decided to understand the reasons.

“THE WORK OF THE COMMISSION RAISED QUESTIONS”

The first burial near Yekaterinburg was discovered in 1991. The remains of eleven people were found in two pits. Before burying the bodies, they were burned and doused with acid. The research took more than one year. In the end, the scientists rendered a verdict: before us are the remains of Nicholas II, his wife Alexandra Feodorovna, the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Anastasia and four servants from the royal retinue.

In 1998, they were reburied in the Peter and Paul Fortress. During the funeral service, the priest said: “Rest, O Lord, the souls of Thy servant, whose names Thou hast weighed.” In other words, members of the royal family were buried nameless. The church did not recognize the royal family in the remains.

And in 2007, seventy meters from the first grave near Yekaterinburg, a second burial was found. Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria rested there. And again, years of research, dozens of examinations. Technologies have come a long way, but the Russian Orthodox Church remains adamant.

There are many historical versions of what happened. Questions arise not only among us, but also among a significant part of society. The work of the commission in the 90s was closed. It is unclear how samples were taken, including from distant relatives of the Romanovs, to compare DNA. Skeptical researchers drew different conclusions. Someone said that the tests did not match. Too often they tried to tell us that all questions were removed and there was nothing more to talk about. This approach causes distrust and rejection,” Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin, head of the synodal department for relations between church and society, told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

“A MISTAKE FOR THE CHURCH IS IMPOSSIBLE”

Then, at the turn of the century, many reproached scientists and researchers for being in a hurry. They said that the authorities were in a hurry to bury the remains as quickly as possible - supposedly they wanted to be in time for the 80th anniversary of the execution. The Holy Synod even voiced ten questions on this matter. They demanded a dental examination and a full anthropological examination. Soon answers were received, but they did not suit the clergy.

However, in 2000 the royal family was canonized. The Romanovs were canonized as royal passion-bearers.

Now experts have proposed comparing genetic material with blood samples from the uniform of Emperor Alexander II. This kind of research, with maximum openness, could help establish the truth, and for the church this is very important, since the imperial family was canonized. If the remains are recognized, they will be venerated as holy relics. A mistake is impossible for the church,” explained Vsevolod Chaplin.

“EXAMINATION IS 99.9 PERCENT ACCURATE”

But scientists are almost one hundred percent confident that they are right. They say there is no reason to doubt the accuracy of the research.

From a scientific point of view, there can be no mistake. You see, there simply aren’t enough people in the world for the combination of identified symptoms to be repeated in someone else. The examination is not 99 percent accurate, but even twenty-nines after the decimal point. From a scientific point of view, there is no doubt that all members of the royal family have been discovered,” Svetlana Borinskaya, Doctor of Biological Sciences, leading researcher at the Vavilov Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

- And the church says that the DNA of the remains was compared with too distant relatives of the Romanovs.

Yes, the church really had a question: why did they attract distant relatives and not close ones in the 90s? For example, why didn’t they compare it with the remains of Nicholas II’s brother George, who rested in the Peter and Paul Fortress. Back in the 90s, they did an analysis on George. With the approval of the church and with the support of the metropolitan, the burial was opened and an examination was carried out. The relationship was one hundred percent confirmed.

- Then why is the church not sure of the authenticity of the remains?

In 2007, Evgeniy Rogaev conducted a much more conclusive analysis than in the 90s. He examined the blood stains of Nicholas II himself. Nothing could be more proof than this. I assume that this result is simply not known to everyone. It is very difficult for a non-specialist to understand the details of genetic testing.

The issue of additional research is currently being discussed at the working commission. Scientists are ready to meet halfway, but it is already clear that no one will have time to carry out the examination before October 18. The remains will be buried, but will they find eternal rest?

It depends on what the church requires. There are types of research that do not require a new autopsy, explained Svetlana Borinskaya.

MEANWHILE

DISCOVERY IN THE IMPERIAL FAMILY

In Europe, there are two organizations that unite the descendants of the imperial family. Members of the “Russian Imperial House” consider the great-great-granddaughter of Alexander II, Maria Vladimirovna, to be the head. The head of the “Association of Members of the Romanov Family” is the great-nephew of Nicholas II, Prince Dmitry Romanovich.

We know that some priests recognize the Ekaterinburg remains as authentic. Why the church has not done this yet is a big mystery to us. Representatives of the association closely followed the process and were very happy with the decision to reburial. Those of them who are healthy will definitely come to say goodbye to the children of Nicholas II,” Ivan Artsishevsky, a representative of the Association of Members of the Romanov Family in Russia, told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

But a full family meeting still won’t work. Maria Vladimirovna is in solidarity with the Russian Orthodox Church and refuses to go to St. Petersburg without the blessing of the patriarch.

There is still a lot that is unclear in this story. There is reason to believe that in 1929 the remains were dug up uncontrollably and could have been transferred from place to place. Who did it and why is a mystery. Who created the burial grounds is a mystery. Everything cannot be reduced only to genetic testing. The House of Romanov has never made sharp statements that these remains are fake, but we are sure that there is no hurry,” Alexander Zakatov, director of the office of Her Imperial Highness, told Komsomolskaya Pravda.

What is the official investigation and scientific examination hiding in the case of the murder of the family of the last Russian emperor?

"The world will never know what we did to them..."

Commissioner Peter Voikov

(answering a question about the circumstances of Nikolai’s deathIIand his family)

The results of an unprecedented 24-year investigation into the belonging of the “Ekaterinburg remains” to the family of the last Russian Emperor Nicholas should soon be summed up II, shot in Ipatiev’s house on the night of July 16-17, 1918. The Patriarchal Commission and the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church supported a comprehensive anthropological and historical examination. High-ranking scientists in Russia and other countries are studying molecular genetic and other data from the bones allegedly buried by the murderer of the royal family, Yakov Yurovsky, in a place called PorosenkovLog to make a final verdict on their authenticity.

Researchers were first brought to this location where the remains were found (on the Old Koptyakovskaya Road) by a note from Yurovsky, in which he describes in detail where and how he buried the corpses of the royal family. But why did the malicious killer give a detailed report to his descendants, where should they look for evidence of the crime? Moreover, a number of modern historians put forward the version that Yurovsky belonged to an occult sect and was certainly not interested in the further veneration of holy relics by believers. If he wanted to confuse the investigation in this way, then he definitely achieved his goal - the case of the murder of Nicholas II and his family under the symbolic number 18666 has been shrouded in a halo of secrecy for many years and contains a lot of contradictory data.

The burial commission, the head of which in 1998, for unknown reasons, was appointed by a former deputy prime minister Boris Nemtsov, according to the estimates of today's researchers of the remains (in particular, Bishop Tikhona Shevkunova), performed her work in bad faith and committed many violations in her research. After this, at the request of the Orthodox public in 2015, President Vladimir Putin a decree was given to conduct a re-examination of the Ekaterinburg remains, involving highly professional experts in the case.

Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, in his recent report, described in detail exactly how the work of experts is carried out: samples for molecular genetic examination are sent to several similar researchers at once, after which final conclusions are drawn about the results. The work of the commission is carried out behind closed doors, in an atmosphere of strict secrecy. To avoid leakage of information, members of the commission signed non-disclosure documents, which also worries many Orthodox Christians.

It is known that in order to ensure the objectivity of the examination, an autopsy of the king’s grave was also recently carried out AlexandraIII to take samples of biomaterial from his skull. Despite the fact that the procedure was carried out with all the rituals provided for by the Orthodox Church - memorial services and other prayers, the moral aspect of this action is questioned by Orthodox believers. And in general, anthropological and genetic examination is not welcomed by the people of God in the study of relics.

The Orthodox are afraid that they will end up getting results that are incompatible with their ideas, because on Ganina Yama, where tens of thousands of pilgrims flock every year on Tsar’s Day (July 17-18), miracles and healings occur. According to believers, this is where the grace of God is clearly present. In the event of a “transfer” of the holy place where the relics were found from Ganina Yama to Porosenkov Log, believers will be, in a sense, lost.

“Our religious procession will be divided in two - some of the pilgrims will go from the Church on the Blood to Ganina Yama, while the other will go to Porosenkov Log,” the Orthodox community sadly jokes.

In addition to the religious problem of analyzing the Ekaterinburg remains, it is of a legal and cultural nature. Many circumstances indicate that the murder of the royal family is an act of human ritual sacrifice. The four-digit inscription in the basement of the Ipatiev House is an encrypted message left in accordance with cabalistic rituals. However, for some reason the modern investigation diligently ignores this fact.

“In the lifetime edition of the book (by the first investigator in the case of the murder of the royal family) Nikolai Sokolov there is a subtle hint at the ritual nature of the crime in the description of the four-digit inscription in the Ipatiev basement. There is no such hint in the posthumous edition,” says the historian. Leonid Bolotin, who has been researching this topic for 20 years.

“After many years of studying materials about the regicide, I believe that the regicides used Jewish rituals, not Hasidic or Pharisees, but Sadducean rituals. And the postcard with a sacrificial rooster with the head of a sovereign in the hands of a Hasidic rabbi was created precisely by the Sadducees, the world bankers, in order to turn the arrows of regicide on the dark Hasidim.

The Ekaterinburg regicide rituals are fundamentally different from the Hasidic human sacrifices known from the Saratov, Velezh cases and other high-profile murders, which are described by the famous ethnographer, writer and military doctor IN AND. Dahl. According to Hasidic rituals, one should not destroy or hide the victim, but must leave it. As you know, they did not do this with the bodies of the royal martyrs - they were burned. This is rather reminiscent of the burning of human victims in ancient Carthage.

The Sadducees, for their conspiracy purposes, used the Phoenician (Carthaginian, Hebrew) alphabet, and the four-character inscription in the Ipatiev basement was made in Hebrew letters,” notes Bolotin.

It is worth adding that the criminal case of the murder of the royal family has now been resumed and expanded, and its ritual nature (raising little doubt among the Orthodox public) is one of the working versions.

“Ritual killings are happening all over the world. If someone denies them, he is simply an idiot who believes in the “official” media. There are known ritual murders of Christians by Jews who are now canonized by the church - for example, a baby GabrielBialystok and others. If we recognized the murder of royal martyrs as ritual, and with it the fact that Lenin-Blank And Trotsky-Bronstein involved in satanic rituals - this would completely change the situation in the understanding of the events of October 1917, in the political life of the country. We would see what forces were really behind the revolution, we would realize that they were far from atheists.

Look what is happening now - how many media outlets are involved in ensuring that these remains are recognized as royal relics. A huge amount of material and human resources are involved... and it is unlikely that all this was done in the interests of truth, in the interests of Russia », - the publicist is convinced IgorFriend.

Regarding the expert opinion on the remains, all citizens who respect the history of our country have every right to express doubts and ask questions - after all, we are talking about the holy relics of the Sovereign, canonized by the Church of the last Russian emperor. Fraudling the results of this study would be akin to a national crime.

“It is possible that another anti-church provocation awaits us. Most Orthodox Christians do not want to identify the Ekaterinburg remains with the royal ones. Problems in the examination began with a gross violation of the rules for examining bodies. They were dug in unsanitary conditions. The purity of the experiment could have been violated, the historian said PeterMultatuli at the scientific conference “Ekaterinburg remains: where is the truth and where is the fiction?”, which took place on June 18, 2017.

The very first investigation of the “white” investigator Sokolov, who was certainly interested in revealing the truth, showed that the bodies of the martyrs were destroyed using gasoline and sulfuric acid. There are witnesses, for example, a forester Rednikov, who discovered burnt bones, a finger that belonged to the empress Alexandra Fedorovna, sebaceous masses, fat left over from burning bodies. Witnesses saw 640 liters of gasoline, 9-10 pounds of sulfuric acid, brought by order of the Bolshevik Voikova, also involved in this case...

Supporters of the version about the authenticity of the Yekaterinburg remains rely primarily on a note from the murderer of the royal family, Yurovsky, who deliberately set everyone on the wrong trail. He told in detail where and when he buried the corpses of the royal family. Not only did he not try to hide this information, but he also disseminated it as much as possible. For what?

Judging by the actual data, on the night of July 17, Yurovsky remained in the Ipatiev House after the bodies of the murdered were taken away. He sent for people to clean up the blood in the room. It was not difficult for Yurovsky to destroy the remains of the corpses. The events in the forest were most likely completely invented by him.

Yurovsky was also not in Porosenkov Log on July 19 and did not bury the corpses. Many of the circumstances surrounding the creation of the “burial ground” of the royal family there are false.”

By the way, Peter Multatuli himself is the great-grandson of the cook Ivan Kharitonov, murdered in the Ipatiev House along with the royal family, and devoted a significant part of his life to discovering the truth about this fateful event.

At the same conference, a former investigator for particularly important cases of the Main Investigation Department of the Investigative Committee under the Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation addressed the audience Vladimir Solovyov, to whom in the 90s of the last century was entrusted with the conduct of the criminal case into the murder of the royal family, which consisted of 26 volumes.

According to Solovyov’s official conclusion, the “ritual version” of the murder has been ruled out, and the investigation does not have any evidence of the involvement of Lenin or any other representative of the top leadership of the Bolsheviks in the destruction of the royal family. Allegedly, this was a private decision of the Ural Regional Council, which was later conveyed to the presidium of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and the Leninist Council of People's Commissars. And the “burial of several people in the form of stacked skeletal remains,” found in 1991, certainly belongs to the royal family (only two bodies were burned).

Actually, Solovyov repeated this version in his speech. However, social activists and historians asked the investigator (who, by the way, is still under a subscription not to disclose documents in the case) a number of pressing questions:

“The procedure for removing the remains was grossly violated several times - is it possible to use such evidence in criminal proceedings? And many scientists consider the method of genetic testing itself unreliable - is there any unity on this issue?” - asked the religious expert Vladimir Semenko, but no clear answers were received.

Neither the leadership of the Russian Church nor representatives of the Romanov family came to the pathetic burial of the Ekaterinburg remains in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg in 1998. Moreover, then Patriarch Alexy II made Boris Yeltsin promise that he would not call the remains royal - and the president kept this word.

There are also purely scientific contradictions. Professor Lev Zhivotovsky, Head of the Center for Human DNA Identification, Institute of General Genetics. Vavilov, conducted his own independent examinations in two institutes in America, comparing the DNA of the queen’s sister Elizaveta Fedorovna with the remains found in Piglet Log. Analysis showed that they have nothing in common. A similar result was obtained by DNA analysis of the remains considered to be those of Nicholas II, with the genes of his own nephew Tikhon Nikolaevich Kulikovsky-Romanov.

Soon after this, a criminologist from Japan unexpectedly visited the Moscow Patriarchate for Alexy II Tatsuo Nagai, Director of the Forensic Science Department at Kitasato University . He announced that the analysis of sweat from the lining of Nicholas II’s frock coat and the blood data remaining in Japan after the assassination attempt on the emperor when he was Tsarevich coincided with the result of an analysis of blood samples from the Tsar’s nephew Tikhon Kulikovsky-Romanov and did not coincide with the “Ekaterinburg remains.” So here, at least, “not everything is so simple.”

Today it is obvious that new facts have emerged in this complicated case, otherwise it would not have been resumed with the involvement of such powerful resources. Just what these facts are - alas, no one knows, which gives rise to many new conjectures.

Already in November of this year, a detailed conclusion of the commission on the issue of the identity of the Yekaterinburg remains is expected. Around the same time, the Council of Bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church will take place, which will issue its verdict. Whether it will become the cause of another schism in Russia or, on the contrary, will strengthen the Orthodox faith - time and the reaction of the people will tell. “What determines the holiness of relics - God’s grace or DNA chains?” - Believers ironically asked at the conference on the royal remains...

The question is rather rhetorical, but the subtext is clear - modern examinations should not become a screen for distorting the truth. According to the Orthodox community, the end to this matter will be put not by an investigation hidden from everyone, but by an open scientific and historical discussion.

Varvara Gracheva

On Monday, November 27, 2017, a conference “The case of the murder of the Royal Family: new examinations and materials. Discussion” dedicated to the study of the results of the study of the remains found near Yekaterinburg.

The conference was headed by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill of Moscow and All Rus'. The conference was attended by members, bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church, and invited experts.

Opening address by His Holiness Patriarch Kirill

Opening speech by Bishop Tikhon of Yegoryevsk

Marina Viktorovna Molodtsova,
Senior Investigator for Particularly Important Cases of the First Investigation Department of the Main Directorate for Investigation of Particularly Important Cases of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation
“On the shortcomings of the previous investigation and the need to resume the investigation in the fall of 2015. On the progress of the criminal investigation and the results of individual forensic examinations"

,
Candidate of Biological Sciences, senior researcher at the Research Institute and Museum of Anthropology, Moscow State University. M.V. Lomonosov
“Preliminary results of a comprehensive forensic anthropological examination”

,
Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Honored Doctor of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Deputy Head for Scientific Work of the Bureau of Forensic Medicine
Health Committee of the Government of the Leningrad Region
“Results of the forensic medical examination. On the possibility of complete burning (destruction) of bodies under given conditions, gunshot wounds on the remains"

,
Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, laureate of the Russian Government Prize, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor
“Characteristics of the dentofacial system and X-ray cephalometric analysis of the structure of the facial skeleton in the “Ekaterinburg remains” (forensic dental examination)”

Sergei Alekseevich Nikitin,
doctor, forensic expert, chief specialist in the field of personal identification and anthropological reconstruction, Bureau of Forensic Medical Examination of the Moscow Department of Health
“Expert studies of skulls No. 7 and No. 4, as well as teeth discovered in the 2007 burial.”

Alexey Sergeevich Abramov,
Candidate of Medical Sciences, Senior Expert of the Department of Medical and Biological Research of the Directorate for the Organization of Expert and Forensic Activities of the Main Directorate of Forensic Science of the Investigative Committee of the Russian Federation
“Expert research in 3D format of Skull No. 7 and Skull No. 4, as well as analysis of available data on the burning of bodies under various circumstances”

Viktor Nikolaevich Zvyagin,
Honored Scientist of the Russian Federation, Doctor of Medical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of Medical and Forensic Identification of the Russian Center for Forensic Medical Examination of the Ministry of Health of the Russian Federation
"Research on Burnt Remains"

Discussion and discussion of previous reports
​regarding anthropological issues

Alexander Borisovich Bezborodov,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor, Acting Rector of the Russian State University for the Humanities, Director of the Historical and Archival Institute of the Russian State University for the Humanities
"The fate of the remains of the Romanov family as a political problem in the Soviet Union"

Vasily Stepanovich Khristoforov,
Doctor of Law, Corresponding Member of the Russian Academy of Sciences, former head of the Department of Registration and Archival Funds of the FSB of Russia
“Archival materials of the FSB of Russia about the “Ekaterinburg events”: from versions to evidence”

Lyudmila Anatolyevna Lykova,
Doctor of Historical Sciences, chief specialist of the Russian State Archive of Socio-Political History
“Actions of participants in the “Ekaterinburg events” on Ganina Yama and Porosyonkov Log”

​

,
Candidate of Historical Sciences, Associate Professor, Head of the Department of Auxiliary and Special Historical Disciplines at the Institute of History and Archives of the Russian State University for the Humanities
“Historical reliability of the investigation materials by N.A. Sokolov and the validity of the conclusions made by him and other authors"

Final discussion