The General Prosecutor of the Russian Federation (hereafter, GP RF), on the basis of the ruling of the Tverskoi District Court of Moscow of 14 November 2006, reviewed again the motion by the Head of the Russian Imperial House, H.I.H. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, on the rehabilitation of her most august relatives, Nicholas II and the members of his family of 1 August 2005, and has issued what is again an illegal and groundless ruling rejecting the rehabilitation of the Holy Royal Passion Bearers.

On the basis of Articles 8 and 9 of the Law of the Russian Federation (hereafter, RF) “Concerning the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression,” the GP RF sent the case of the rehabilitation of the Royal Family and its negative ruling of 26 September 2007, no. 12/13-3849-96, to the Supreme Court of the RF. No new arguments whatsoever were added to the abovementioned ruling of the GP RF.

Rejecting the rehabilitation of the members of the Royal Family, the GP RF makes reference to the fact that “reliable evidence of the existence of some sort of official ruling by a judicial body, or by a non-judicial body that was invested with a judicial function (sic), that ordered the executions, as is required by the present legislation on rehabilitation, is not extant. (From the cited passage, it remains unclear what, according to First Deputy Attorney General A. E. Buksman, who signed the Ruling, “is required by the present legislation on rehabilitation.” From the text, it precisely follows that it requires only the application of political repression against those who were murdered (?!)—H.I.H.’s Chancellery.)

Also, the GP RF asserts that “the Ural Regional Soviet was not a body that had a judicial function, as required by Article 3 of the Law.” Before commenting on the substance of this assertion, it is necessary to note that Article 3 of the Law of the RF “Concerning the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression” could not under any circumstances require anything of the Ural Regional Soviet in 1918 since this Law was passed only in 1991. The purpose of the legal parameters of Article 3 of the Law is to identify the group of people who qualify for rehabilitation, not to identify the authority or the function of organs of the state in the past, in the present, or in the future. The legal authority invested in this or that governmental body in 1917-1918 (and later) was determined by the pronouncements of the Congress of Soviets, and by the decrees of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee and of the Soviet of People’s Deputies.

The GP RF wrongly interprets the essence of the Law of the RF “Concerning the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression.” It is not by accident that in its “Ruling” there is no reference to the foundational Article 1 of this Law, which states: “Political repression is the various means of coercion, exercised by the state for political motives, in the form of loss of life or freedom, forced confinement and medical treatment in state mental hospitals, exile from the country and loss of citizenship, forced relocation of a population, internal exile, exile to specific internal locations, confinement in forced labor camps, and also any loss or limitation of rights and freedom of those who had been identified as socially dangerous to the state or to the political order for class, social, national, religious, or any other reasons by a court and by other organs with judicial functions, OR (emphasis added—H.I.H.’s Chancellery) in their administrative capacity by organs of executive power and by the duties of persons and social organizations or their organs invested with administrative powers.” Thus, the Federal Legislature by no means required the necessary presence of “official rulings by a judicial body or by a non-judicial body that was invested with a judicial function,” but foresaw other cases where persons would be the victims of political repression and require rehabilitation, namely: measures of coercion employed by the government for political motives, in the form of the loss of life and freedom that was brought about “in their administrative capacity by organs of executive power and by the duties of persons and social organizations or their organs invested with administrative powers.”

In this way, even if one should accept the historically inaccurate point of view of the GP RF that the Ural Regional Soviet of Workers and Soldiers Deputies “was not an organ that had a judicial function,” its argument in any case contradicts the Law of the RF “Concerning the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression.”

But the evidence, presented by the Head of the Russian Imperial House, H.I.H. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, to the GP RF, to the Tverskoi District Court of Moscow, to the Moscow City Court, and to the Supreme Court of the RF, irrefutably establishes that:

1. The Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family, and all members of the Russian Imperial House, were recognized by the totalitarian Soviet government as class enemies, as socially dangerous to the state and to the political order.
    
2. The political decision to execute the Emperor Nicholas II was made already in 1903 at the II Congress of the RSDRP [Russian Social-Democratic Workers’ Party] and then was immediately certified in Party documents RSDRP (b) – RKP (b) [Russian Communist Party].
    
3. From the moment of the seizure of power by the Bolsheviks on 25 October (Old Style) 1917, the Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family who had been arrested by the Provisional Government, continued to be held under guard in Tobol’sk, and then in Ekaterinburg on the decision of a higher organ of state power in the RSFSR [Russian Soviet Federated Socialist Republic]—the All-Russian Central Executive Committee [VTsIK]—on the direct orders of the head of the Soviet state, the Chair of the VTsIK, Ia. M. Sverdlov. The loss of freedom inflicted upon the Imperial Family is, by definition, political repression for which they should be rehabilitated, even had they not been later executed.
    
4. The decision to execute the Emperor Nicholas II was made by local state authorities—the Ural Regional Soviet of Workers and Solders Deputies, which exercised full authority, including judicial functions.
    
5. The incarceration of the Holy Royal Passion Bearers and the carrying out of the executions were actions taken by, among others, the members of the Extraordinary Committee of the Ural Soviet, which had judicial authority.
    
6. The decision of the Ural Regional Soviet to shoot the Emperor Nicholas II was “recognized as legal” by the highest organ of state power in the RSFSR, the VTsIK.
   
    
7. The original death warrant issued by the Ural Regional Soviet for the Emperor Nicholas II has not been found, but the fact of its existence is proven by the minutes of the meetings of the VTsIK and of the Soviet of People’s Commissars (the government of the RSFSR) from 18 July 1918, found in official publications from the Presidium of the VTsIK in the newspapers Pravda and Izvestiia on 19 July 1918.
    
8. The Soviet authorities accused the Emperor Nicholas II of being guilty of “numerous bloody acts against the Russian people,” that is, if we translate this allegation into modern terminology, guilty of crimes against humanity.
    
9. According to the ruling of the GP RF on the closing of the criminal case No. 18/123666-92 of 18 July 1998 (which, contrary to the present assertion of the GP RF, was raised not “in relation to persons who had committed these murders [of members of the Royal Family—HIH’s Chancellery], but, as follows from the very ruling on the petition in the criminal matter, “in connection with the unearthing in the environs of Ekaterinburg in July 1991 of skeletal remains of nine persons with evidence of injuries inflicted by bayonets and firearms”) all members of the Russian Imperial House are recognized as having suffered political repression and are worthy of rehabilitation.
    
10. In 1999, the GP RF issued to the Russian Imperial House certificates concerning the rehabilitation of the Grand Dukes Paul Aleksandrovich, Dimitrii Konstantinovich, Nicholas Mikhailovich, and Georgii Mikhailovich, all of whom were shot in Petropavlovsk Fortress in January 1919. In these certificates, it was indicated that the grand dukes were executed “for belonging to the Imperial House of Romanov.” That is, at that time the GP RF recognized that the very fact of belonging to the Russian Imperial House was reason enough for political repression.
     
11. In 2001, the chief military judge advocate general of the RF made the decision to rehabilitate the famous Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg and his driver, Vilmos Langfelder, and the Attorney General of the RF, V. V. Ustinov, issued to the Swedes a certificate on their rehabilitation, including information on the circumstances of their death, about which essentially nothing was known except for the fact that they had been arrested in Hungary by the military intelligence services of the USSR and had been taken to Moscow where they were kept imprisoned. No documents whatsoever, much less any decisions or other materials related to the case of the Swedish prisoners, have ever been found, and no official charges against the men were ever filed—none of which prevented the prosecutors in that case from invoking the Law of the RF “Concerning the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression.”
     
12. In August 2001, the Jubilee Council of the Russian Orthodox Church canonized Emperor Nicholas II and members of his family as belonging among the New Martyrs and Confessors of Russia as Passion Bearers. Despite the fact that, in the RF, Church and State are separate, the Church’s determinations about those who have undergone political repression for religious reasons have legal recognition from the state. Shortly after the canonization of the Holy Royal Passion Bearers, the Russian Orthodox Church through its first hierarch, His Holiness Patriarch Aleksei II of Moscow and All Russia and the Communications Service of the Office of External Church Relations of the Moscow Patriarchate, officially and publicly supported the legal initiatives of the Russian Imperial House to secure the rehabilitation of the Royal Family and recognized this act as vital for modern Russia.

Acting contrary to all the presented evidence, the refusal of the GP RF to rehabilitate the members of the Royal Family may be aimed at the thought that in the modern Russian state, there continue to exist certain political forces which are striving to revive discrimination against people along class lines and which are hindering the application of the Law and the favourable settlement of the suit brought by the Head of the Russian Imperial House, H.I.H. Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, for Russian citizenship.

Something reminiscent of the relatively recent Soviet past is present in the Ruling of the GP RF on the rehabilitation of the members of the Royal Family: “Obliging the Attorney General of the Russian Federation to accept the determinate ruling, the court is in fact requiring an unlawful action, which contradicts the function of legal proceedings (Art. 2, GPK RF).” First of all, it is difficult to imagine that the court would at some point in time require someone to accept an INDETERMINATE RULING. Secondly, it remains unclear what is wrong with the requirement of the court to accept a DETERMINATE ruling. And thirdly, in principle the position of the GP RF is surprising with regard to the court, which, from its point of view, would “require an unlawful action,” something that is completely inconsistent with a state functioning within the law.

For our state and society, it is extraordinarily important that justice be done for the Holy Royal Passion Bearers, that the repression of them be recognized as illegal, and that they be rehabilitated in accordance with the Law of the RF, “Concerning the Rehabilitation of the Victims of Political Repression.” For as long as the execution of the Royal Family continues to be “recognized as legal” by the modern Russian state, which is the successor to the Soviet state, we, its citizens, have no firm guarantee that totalitarianism and state terror will not return.

Moscow, 25 October/7 November 2007