Tsar Nicholas II's martyrdom celebrated as Russia seeks its soul
At least 60,000 pilgrims from around the world participated in the pilgrimage and divine liturgy in honour of the Romanov family slain by the Bolsheviks. The tsar was the last to hold sacred power in Europe. Communism included a new from "Antichrist" sacredness. Russian Orthodox exalt the "passive martyrdom", devotion to the suffering Christ.
Moscow (AsiaNews) – Tens of thousands of people took part in the procession in Yekaterinburg from the Church on Blood, scene of the murder of Russia’s imperial family, to the Ganina Yama (Ganya's Pit) (pictures 1 and 2), where their bodies were found.
The event was to mark the 99th anniversary of the assassination of the last Tsar, his family and their household staff, 17 July. In 1918, in the city built in the Urals to honour Tsarina Ekaterina II, local Bolsheviks tried to conceal the bodies in an ordinary pit. Today, a monumental complex stands with a church and a monastery dedicated to the Holy Imperial Martyrs.
The title of "martyr" given to Nicholas II and his family corresponds to the Russian notion of passion bearer (strastoterpets), a form of martyrdom not necessarily linked to the profession of faith at death. This is very typical of Russian spirituality.
The first Russian saints were canonised around 1125. They were two brothers, Boris and Gleb, sons of the prince-baptiser Vladimir of Kiev, killed by their brother Sviatopolk for political reasons, but they did bear witness to the faith and ultimately submitted to the will of God.
Another famous case involves Dmitry of Uglich, Ivan the Terrible’s youngest son, drowned in a river by the pretenders to the throne, perhaps by his guardian, Tsar Boris Godunov himself. His assassination began the most tragic time in Russian history before the Bolshevik revolution, a period known as the ‘Time of Troubles’ at the beginning of the 16th century. Russia’s main Russian national holiday, 4 November (22 October Old calendar) marks the victory over Polish occupiers in 1612, and the end the upheavals of that period.
The family of the last Tsar was judged worthy of such honour, for the Christian meekness with which they accepted their sacrifice. Members of the Imperial Household also died with them including a Catholic doctor and a Protestant teacher (picture 3).
This type of martyrdom, which inspired Leo Tolstoy in his secular religion of non-resistance to evil (nieprotivlencestvo), describes in depth the Christian dimension of the Russian soul, and the devotion to the suffering Christ.
In its history, the Russian people have experienced many periods of ‘passive martyrdom’: the ‘Tartar Yoke’ that lasted over two centuries (1240-1480), the tragedy of the ‘Time of Troubles’, the Napoleonic invasion, until the long night of the Soviet regime in the 20th century. Impotence and endurance have always been fuelled by an unshakeable faith in rebirth, in the victory of the true faith, like the sun rising after the long, frozen winter.
Like Saint Boris before his passion, and Tsar Nicholas himself, people celebrated the night-long liturgy in Yekaterinburg in the Byzantine-Slavic rite, after a procession led by an authoritative member of the Synod of the Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Aleksandr of Astana and Kazakhstan, the country on the border of the Urals region, where the Russian minority is committed to defending its culture and traditions against Turkic nationalism.
At the end of the procession, the choir sang the ancient Tsarist anthem ‘God save the Tsar’ with the people present. Many would like to see it restored as the national anthem in lieu of the present one, which dates from Soviet times but with lyrics that differ from those that praise the Union of Soviet peoples.
The weak and kind Nicholas II, heir to the fierce dynasties of the Rurikids and the Romanovs, of Ivan the Terrible and Peter the Great, saw his power and empire crumble with a feeling of ineluctability and palingenesis, abdicating the throne on 15 March 1917.
He could not prevent the uprising from becoming a total catastrophe. He had neither the strength nor the vision to support an ideal lost in the tragedies of the First World War, the war that ended all the empires, including the Austrian and Prussian empires, dissolving the illusion of the Holy Alliance among the princes who had defeated Napoleon.
The very principle of autocracy had been defended with all his might by his ancestor, Nicholas I, known as the ‘Policeman of Europe’, who backed other rival monarchs, like the pope and the sultan, in order not to lose the sacredness of power.
The last tsar was also the last divinised sovereign, unless we consider the faraway emperor of Japan, who was crushed by war too, the Second World War. After his abdication, only modern states survived, offspring of 18th Enlightenment that now know face an identity crisis.
In Russia, the lost sacredness of power was replaced by another form of sacredness, that of the ideological and totalitarian party, the religiously "inverted" form of Tsarism conceived by the new Antichrist, whose mummified body still rests today in the Kremlin mausoleum, like a modern Tutankhamun. Tsarism disappeared because the new communist tsar arrived, Lenin's new gospel, then realised by his apostle, Stalin, who in turn sought to become a god.
In commemorating the tsar’s martyrdom, Russia wants to start from a root that seemed dried up, with a passion that goes far beyond the uncertain figures of its own story. This root is the Orthodox faith, which Russians do not see only as a feature of their national culture, but also as a true mission and universal prophecy.
Many Russian believers from many countries like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan and other countries around the world, even from New Zealand, came to the commemoration. It was a great show of the "Russian world", a very popular expression today that points to the "brother nations" of the former Soviet Union, but also to the Russian diaspora in the world, and Russia’s mission to all peoples.
Father Boris Bojkov, who led the New Zealand pilgrims, said that he had come before, and that he plans to keep the memory of the tsar alive in his Russian church in Wellington. His presence at the pilgrimage did not go unnoticed. Father Boris (picture 4) is two-metre tall with Asian features, born in Australia into a Russian-Chinese family, and personifies in some way the great complexity of the Russia’s people and history.
The path to the Ganina Yama snakes its way over 20 kilometres, with volunteers helping seniors and the disabled. During the journey, the night service was celebrated in the typical Russian fashion with vespers, morning lauds and the Divine Liturgy of the Eucharist (Vsenochnoje Bdenie).
About 60,000 pilgrims reached the spot of martyrdom as the early morning light broke the night. Here the local metropolitan, Kirill of Yekaterinburg and Verkhotursk, was waiting for them. He welcomed them with these words: “This procession has touched our souls ... Hardly anyone can remain indifferent to this, expressing our penance and our conversion, in love with the Tsar and our homeland."
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