Eighty years after their executions, the remains of Russia's last czar Nichols II and his family were reburied in St. Petersburg. After this background report, two historians discuss the event and what it means for post-Communist Russia.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: The remains of Russia's last czar, his wife, and three of their five children have finally returned for burial in St. Petersburg. This was once the imperial capital from which the family was sent into internal exile by the Bolsheviks in 1917. This week there has been mourning in St. Petersburg for the members of the Romanov Dynasty, which abruptly ended thousands of miles away in the Ural Mountains in 1918 when Czar Nicholas II and his family were murdered in the town of Yekaterinburg by Bolshevik revolutionaries. Their remains were hidden there until 1991 in an unmarked grave. But there was no trace of two children-the heir Alexei and daughter Maria. Now Nicholas II and his family's final resting place is the Peter and Paul Fortress across the Neva River from the Winter Palace-now The Hermitage-where the Romanovs once held court. 
Today they received the rites of the Orthodox Church. The bones were placed in a separate room in the same cathedral where generations of Romanovs have been buried in family crypts. For decades these last Romanovs were denied a proper burial because the Communists didn't want their remains to be a symbol around which their opponents could rally.
Once equated with political absolutism and decadence, the Romanov legacy is embraced by Russia.
To the Bolsheviks, the Romanovs represented all that was wrong with Russia--political absolutism and aristocratic decadence. But to the courtiers and some of their ordinary subjects, Nicholas and his wife, Alexandra, were best remembered for their fiery love and their ill fortune at having an heir, Alexei, afflicted with hemophilia. Their deaths at the hands of the Bolsheviks sent shock 
waves through Europe and presaged the abrupt end of other royal dynasties in Germany and Austria later in 1918. In the decades since, Communism has risen and fallen in Russia, the former Soviet Union and Eastern Europe. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, Russia has been struggling to develop a national identity. President Boris Yeltsin had originally planned the burial to serve as a symbolic link between Russia's past and its future. And other Russians had hoped the burial would serve as an act of atonement for a bad episode in their country's history. But the ceremony did not turn out to be quite as grand as expected, and the funeral became surrounded by controversy and some confusion. President Yeltsin had said he was not coming and then yesterday changed his mind and said that his attendance represented an effort to reach the historical truth.
PRESIDENT BORIS YELTSIN: (speaking through interpreter) The burial of the remains of the Yekaterinburg victims is first of all an act of human justice. It's a symbol of the unity of the nation, an expiation of common guilt. We all bear responsibility for the historical memory of the nation. And that's why I could not fail to come here. I must be here, as both an individual and a president.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: The president originally backed out when the head of the Russian Orthodox Church-who has millions of followers-had declared he would not participate. He said he was proposing an alternative ceremony like the one today that he led outside Moscow. The patriarch has said that he is concerned that the bones being buried today in St. Petersburg are not necessarily those of Nicholas II.
PATRIARCH ALEXY II, Russian Orthodox Church: (speaking through interpreter) Along with those with who have received the commission's findings on the czar's remains, there are many who do not accept those findings. And what we have is a division between what the general public accepts and what the church accepts.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: The church wants to make Nicholas II a saint and as long as it has doubts about the bones, it doesn't want to risk sanctifying false relics. Church leaders have refused so far to accept three sets of DNA tests-including one matching the Romanov bones to the DNA of Britain's Prince Philip. The tests were conducted by American, British, and Russian scientists. All three concluded that the bones belonged to the czar. The circumstances surrounding the death of Nicholas II and his family have produced many rumors that some family members survived-most famously Princess Anastasia, though her bones were buried today. Stories are told that the diamonds and jewels hidden in the corsets of the Romanov women protected them from the executioner's bullets. Such legends have helped spawn countless pretenders, including Oleg Filatov, a one-time customs agent, who says his father was Alexei, the hemophiliac heir, who somehow escaped. But this man also says Alexei was his father.
NICHOLAS III: (speaking through interpreter) You can see it in my appearance. I look exactly like my grandmother, Alexandra Feodorovna. The young heir looked more like his mother than his father.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: The monarchy remains an emotional issue for some Russians. A few even dream about restoring the Romanov dynasty.
NONA SUKHANOVA: (speaking through interpreter) It is important to me because it preserved my Russian faith and my love for the czar. I preserved all my feelings in spite of the times, despite all the difficulties which surrounded me.
Fond-- and not-so-fond-- memories of Czarist Russia.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: Many old Communists have less fond stories of conditions before the Russian Revolution.
RITA FILATOVA: (speaking through interpreter) The czar also exploited and stole from the people. Remember his coronation when the people had to stand in line overnight just to get a piece of sausage? What does that say? It tells us just how poor the people were in Czarist Russia.
JENNIFER GRIFFIN: Exactly 80 years after the czar's death and after 74 years of Communism, the controversy over the Romanovs' burial shows Russians are still divided about how to deal with their traumatic past.
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