ROMANOVS REMEMBERED July 17, 1998 The NewsHour with Jim Lehrer Transcript

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Eighty years after their executions, the remains of Russia's last czar Nichols II and his family were reburied in St. Petersburg. After a background report, two historians discuss the event and what it means for post-Communist Russia.

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A RealAudio version of this segment is available. NEWSHOUR LINKS: July 17, 1998 A background report on the Romanov funeral. Browse the NewsHour's coverage of Russia .

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: For more now we're joined by James Billington, the Librarian of Congress. He wrote and narrated a documentary series The Face of Russia, which aired recently on PBS, and he's author of a forthcoming book with the same title. And W. Bruce Lincoln, Professor of Russian History at Northern Illinois University, he's the author of The Romanovs, Autocrats of all the Russians.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: James Billington, what do you think the significance of this burial is today?

What is the greater significance of the Romanov funeral?

JAMES BILLINGTON, Librarian of Congress: Well, I think the significance of it is a little more than it looked like it was going to be a few days ago, because there's been so much quarreling about this, there's been so much division, it's really kind of showed the absence of legitimacy in the present political climate, because everybody's been quarreling about whether the bones are real or not, whether the situation is such that who should appear and who should not. But I think Yeltsin's appearance today brought to a kind of closure a modest event that was not as big as some had hoped but was not as inconspicuous as others had hoped and, in a sense, represents the closure not necessarily of the fact that there might be a future monarch but of the dream of restoration of the Romanovs, but at the same time it lifted it to a slightly higher level than this squabbling of recent times because Yeltsin emphasized the need for repentance, the fact that all are responsible.

The thing that was significant was the event, itself, which unleashed the terrorism of the Soviet period. I think it's brought to a closure not only a sense that all are responsible, as Havel once said, even he was in prison, have to collaborate with the totalitarian regime, all in some sense that participate, including Yeltsin, himself, will bull doze-the place where the execution had occurred-of the royal family-so I think it brought to a relatively humane and decent close and was closed by a speech, the sudden appearance of the president-said he wouldn't come-which lifted it to a somewhat deeper and more spiritual plane, which I think people have felt all along, because this was a horrible, dreadful massacre, and it was done without any procedure, without any legal basis, or was in a sense the first terrorist act of the 20th century, so it-there was a dignified and-I think the church missed a great opportunity by not participating in it, but I think it was the significance of it-was that a humane-and in a relatively dignified way has been brought to one of the two great controversies-reburial of the Romanovs-one that remains undone is the reburial of Lenin.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. We'll come back to that. Bruce Lincoln, are the Romanovs still important to a great number of Russians, or are they mostly forgotten?

W. BRUCE LINCOLN, Northern Illinois University: Well, I think the image of the Romanovs is what's important, and what the Romanovs stood for and what they represented. It's true that the Romanovs in the Bolshevik view and in the views of many lesser Russians certainly represented a time of difficulty and trial hand tribulation, represented the first World War, it represented the difficulty of the Industrial Revolution. But the Romanovs also stood for a time when Russia was great, but when Russia was not the Evil Empire. And I think that's important to keep in mind, because the Russians are starting to discover their past in ways that they couldn't have 20 or 30 years ago. They'd lost sight of much of their past because it had been so manipulated. And now the Russians are beginning to see what their past is like. They're rediscovering it, but they're rediscovering it sequentially in reverse, as it were, starting with the President and working back toward the past. And they've found, I think, over time, over the past few years, that certainly the Soviet period was brutal, it was ugly. After all, the number of people who were killed in the various types of terror from 1917 until 1957 represented something like the equivalent of eight Holocausts, if we define a Holocaust as six million people- six million Jews being killed by the Nazis-all of that. But now they're-and they certainly become aware that in the world where Russia wants to be and where Russia wants to matter, that they were for a long time regarded as the Evil Empire. But if you look back earlier, to the Romanov period, this is a time when Russia was great, when it wasn't regarded as evil among nations, and I think that's an important thing to keep in mind.

Did the Russian Orthodox Church lose moral ground for refusing to acknowledge the remains?

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And James Billington, how important is the head of the Orthodox Church's refusal to come to this burial and their refusal to accept the bones as actually the bones of the dead czar and his family?

JAMES BILLINGTON: Well, I think that's-I think that's a rather tragic mistake, of course. The church abroad, which they don't respect and don't like, has already recognized them as canonized, but the church commission decided not to canonize the czar, that he wasn't actually a Christian martyr. And so they felt that they would go along with public opinion. Only 47 percent of the Russian people think the bones are authentic, despite the overwhelming scientific evidence. So I think they missed a great opportunity. Of course, they did have a day of atonement and services elsewhere, but they could have, I think, made an appearance. I think the reasons are not solely doubts about the authenticity of the bones, but I think it's also that they may be wanting to hedge their bets because there's a quarrel within the church, as within the country, as to whether they want an authoritarian nationalist future or a federal democratic future. Yeltsin provided the kind of spiritual basis for moral renewal who could underpin the reform program, and he was much encouraged by these young reformers that he's put at the head of the government. The Orthodox Church seems to be hedging its bets over whether the democratic reform program with a moral and spiritual renewal of the people is going to prevail, or whether it's going to be an authoritarian nationalist that will emerge from the elections of the next two years. So I think they lost moral authority by not formally appearing, even though quite a number of priests did and it was a very dignified service.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Professor Lincoln, do you have anything to add to that about the history of the relationship between the Church and the czar?

W. BRUCE LINCOLN: Well, the relationship between Romanovs and the Church, of course, has been one that's not been particularly advantageous to the Church. I mean, the Romanovs presided over the weakening of the Russian Church. The Church under the Romanovs lost political power, and it lost economic power. It lost a great deal of wealth as the Church was brought into the government, made a part of the government, and the Church became an instrument of the government.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And, Mr. Billington, do any of the pretenders to the Russian throne have any importance in Russian political life?

JAMES BILLINGTON: I don't really think so, although this is such a time of a lack of legitimacy among political authorities that almost anybody that has even a far-fetched claim to anything can get a hearing these days.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And let me just interrupt you one second. What do you mean by that, lack of legitimacy?

JAMES BILLINGTON: Well, because no political leader has more than 20 percent acceptance rating among the Russian people. It's interesting that Yeltsin called on the person who's the moral conscience of Russia, the 91-year-old Dimitri Ligatrov, who advised him to make the kind of statement that he did, because he was-he's a survivor of the first death camp of the 20th century that was followed upon the terrorism involved in the assassination of the Royal Family. So he's looking for legitimization in a very good source, a very wholesome source, who's both the last representative of old imperial Petersburg and at the same time the deepest student of Russian spiritual culture. But the fact that he had to look to him rather than the Church, itself, is an indication that the institutions are not trusted, the politicians are not trusted, and that they have a long way to go before real legitimacy is back in the system, which is what they need to make it going. But I think Yeltsin took a real step forward in re-legitimizing himself. He doesn't have much legitimacy either, and I think he made a courageous and positive act and a good speech, a short one as well.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Bruce Lincoln, what do you think about the pretenders? Do you think this burial might put an end to some of the people saying that they're the heirs to the throne, or no?

W. BRUCE LINCOLN: You know, it's hard to say for sure, but pretenders have such a long history in Russia, they go back almost half a millennium, and whenever a ruler dies under suspicious circumstances, we find that ruler coming back in some form, in some other way, in the popular imagination.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Is this somewhat unique to Russia?

The Russian royals are surrounded by myth.

W. BRUCE LINCOLN: Well, I mean, it is certainly very extreme in Russia. I mean, Emperor Alexander I, for example, ended up supposedly as a hermit in Siberia or wandering in Palestine. That's part of the popular myth about him. There pretenders in the 16th century, in the 17th century, and I see the pretenders that we have now are the ones that somehow escaped miraculously and reappeared as being a continuation of that. Of course, one thing I think has to be kept in mind, and that is that the calendar is starting to catch up with these people. Alexei was born in 1940. He'd be 94 years old, if he were still alive. And pretty soon time is going to run out for all of them.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: And Mr. Billington, looking at this-somebody who doesn't have as close a connection with all of this as you do, it's pretty extraordinary to see these bones being put to rest after 80 years. Do you think this is a turning point of any kind in Russian history, that people in the future will see it as a turning point?

JAMES BILLINGTON: Yes. I think they really interred-they've been rediscovering the past, as Mr. Lincoln was saying, all along, but the past they're rediscovering is more the lost record of provincial improvisation, of things that happened in various places around Russia that official centralized authoritarian history has concealed. And I think they're more interested in reformers of the late imperial period than they are in the life of the czar, as I think they've buried the myth of the czar as probably but not necessarily constitutional monarchy of a different kind, of say the Spanish kind or the North European kind, which still has a certain appeal for Russians. That may be possible, but, as Mr. Lincoln was saying, they didn't treat the Church very well and, in some respects, the Church is hedging its bet maybe because some of them are a little nostalgic for the relative privilege that they enjoyed even in the late Soviet period. In other words, they're not uniform in their displeasure over the whole Soviet episode, and at least they're hedging their bets. But I think it is the-I think we've-it is a relatively humane and to a sad and sordid episode of history and probably the end of the nostalgic myth of czardom but only the beginning of the rediscovery of a very rich and complicated past, as the basis for building a new democracy.

ELIZABETH FARNSWORTH: Okay. Thank you both very much. That's all the time we have. Thank you.

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