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Because my DVR is recording Doctor Zhivago, I have been able to share the television with family members who wanted to watch some of the soap operas.  Just now, when I flipflopped the television back to the film, the scene I used to dread began---the announcement that the Czar had been murdered, along with his entire family---his wife, four daughters (either just out of, or just at the end of, their adolescences), and his son, who, presumably at the age of thirteen (and just a week or so shy of his fourteenth birthday, had begun his adolescence).  Even though my Orthodox Faith has softened the effect of cinematic statement of that tragedy, it still affects me---an echo, now, of its earlier impact, since I understand they are martyrs and are present with Christ, but still a little disturbing.  To this, I now have knowledge of other martyrdoms---of Elizabeth Romanov, the Czar's sister-in-law (through his wife) who was an abbess of an Orthodox Nunnery, and who was thrown, with several others of her group, into a shallow mine shaft after which grenades were dropped in (this is the so-called improved humanity that Marxism and its bastard child, Leninism, created).  I think of other martyrdoms, like that of Benjamin, Metropolitan Bishop of Petrograd and Gdov, martyred for his refusal to allow Bolshevik (i.e., communist) administrators to control the functions of the Orthodox Church, and to alter its ancient Faith and theology.  The Bolsheviks who tried, convicted and sentenced Metropolitcan Benjamin to death were so afraid that their own executioners would refuse to carry out so heinous a sentence on such a pious and holy Christian, that they refused to allow him to put on his vestments.  His beard was shaved, and he was dressed in rags, and then transported, with several others, to the Prokohoc Railway Terminal where the execution proceeded.

All this began to go through my mind when, in the film, the announcement of the Romanovs' murder was made.  I, myself, believe that Russia is still in the grip of evil---witnessed by its behavior toward Ukraine---because it has never fully repented of the murder of so many Orthodox  (and other) Christians.  Russia will remain in the grip of evil until it establishes a Lent-like period of fasting, mourning, and repentance---strict fasting, unrestrained mourning, and soul-felt repentance.  Only that will, one prays, remove the stain of holy Orthodox blood on the terrain of what was once the Soviet Union.

(Oh, and by the way, they need to take that pickled stiff with the bulbous head out of its crypt in Red Square, string it up by the neck from a high gallow, and allows birds and insects to pick the skin from its bones.)

Lastly, my heart goes out to a young man named Kolya, whose best friend and companion was Alexei Romanox, the Tsarevich.  During the exile of the Romanovs prior to their martyrdom, Alexei and Kolya became quite close.  I believe theirs was more than simply a "playground" type friendship.  Kolya, born in 1906, passed away in 1999, having spent the years since 1918 in the emotional torment of overwhelming sorrow over the loss of his friend.  Reading his remarks, I am convinced that theirs was a far more mature relationship that entered into the realms of Love.  I believe Kolya reunited with Alexei in 1999, in the glorious Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ.

I would add one further item.  Grand Duchess Elizabeth, before she became an Orthodox Abbess, lost her husband, the Grand Duke Sergei, to a revolutionary assassin's bomb in 1905, in Moscow.  In 1908, a memorial consisting of a large, brassl Orthodox Cross (the three-barred cross) was raised on the very spot where Sergei perished.  After the Revolution, Vladimir Lenin entertained a particularly ferocious fear of Elizabeth:  he believed that her Orthodox Faith, and the countless acts of charity performed by the Conent of which she was Abbess, was a greater threat to the Revolution, and the principles of Leninist Communism than even the Czar might have been.  In the same year, 1918, in which the Romanovs and Grand Duchess Elizabeth were murdered, the memorial cross was pulled down by ropes being yanked by a crowd of Bolsheviks.  Supposedly, Lenin himself participated in the desecration . . . Lenin, that damnable bastard.

Starward