A Defining Event on the 90th Anniversary of the Execution of the Romanovs

Born after World War II, but old enough to remember the stories told after, I was deeply impressed in the sense of being marked indelibly with stories of the horrors in the concentration camps in Germany and in the former USSR.  Both were vivid examples of what could happen in countries that suppressed religion and religious worship. 

The Diary of Anne Frank made vivid what it was like to live in hiding and fear of being discovered and what girl could not deeply identify with the young Anne and wonder how she would have acted in the same situation.  Perhaps that why in college, I was most interested in studying Germany, Russia and China, totalitarian governments all.  I wanted to understand how that was felt in the daily lives of people.    You've heard that they governed through fear.  Fear, yes, but more than that.  A fear strengthened and potentiated by the breakdown in the web of trust that undergirds a truly civilized country. People are atomized, stripped of what is most personal and human about them.  From their personal bonds of blood and affection for family and friends to their relationship with the Divine.

Too often in news stories about post-Soviet Russia, Germany and China, the focus is on political or economic recovery.  There's more going on than that, witness Requiem for the Romanovs.  From what I read, it was a watershed cultural event that brought to the fore the question that until now have been evaded.

In her weeping, the soloist was not alone. Many of the more than 2,000 people who filled into the concert hall of the largest basilica in Russia, the Church of Christ the Savior, bombed by Stalin and rebuilt in the 1990s, wept openly as they listened and watched the tragedy of the last Romanovs unfold.

The story of the last days of the Romanovs is well known. Czar Nicholas II, embroiled in a terrible war with Germany and Austro-Hungary, decided to abdicate his throne on March 15, 1917. Without a single strong leader, Russia was soon in political turmoil. Out of the turmoil, the tiny but compact and single-minded Bolsheviks emerged as Russia's new rulers toward the end of 1917.

Nicholas and his family were soon placed under house arrest. They gardened, read books, prayed. Then, in the summer of 1918, on the evening of July 17, they were taken to the basement room of their prison, and shot to death. Their bodies were then burned.

Russia had made a clean break with its monarchical, and Christian, past.

The age of the "dictatorship of the proletariat" and of anti-Christian state atheism had begun.
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the Requiem is far from a "nostalgic recollection" of the "good old days of the czars."

Instead, it is a searing socio-political critique of the atheism and persecution of religious belief central to Russia's communist regime.

While In the largest basilica in Russia, it was a cultural event not a religious service
"This is why we chose to organize this Requiem Concert. This is not a liturgy, not a Church celebration, but a cultural event. We want to participate in the cultural debate in Russia today, and make our case.

The Russian Orthodox Church  was the principal sponsor, supported by two American groups; the orchestra directed by a Russian general and the musicians former members of the armed forces.

Bishop Hilarion concluded tonight's Requiem for the Romanovs with these words: "The horror of a national tragedy could not destroy the hope for a breakthrough to light and the inspired certainty that the triumph of evil would be fleeting, and would be followed by a bright future, by growth in spiritual perfection, by restoration and revival. The heroism of the martyrs of the 20th century contains a reflection of the future Kingdom which is transfiguring everyone and everything to live in peace through Christ."