Are Some Russians Craving A Return Of The Tsars?

Photo: One of the last photographs of Nicholas II, showing him at Tsarskoye Selo after his abdication in March 1917. Wikipedia

Anaïs LLOBET, AFP: Century after revolution, some Russians crave return of tsar

Moscow (AFP) - Mikhail Ustinov's ancestors were executed in 1917 for supporting the tsar but a hundred years later the 68-year-old yearns for the return of monarchy to Russia.

"Russians are monarchists in their soul, even though the Soviets tried to destroy our soul," Ustinov, who is a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Moscow monarchist community, told AFP in his small apartment on the outskirts of the Russian capital.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ustinov has dressed in stylized military fatigues in a nod to the officers of the Tsarist army who were fiercely loyal to the monarch and heavily persecuted after the October Revolution.

Executed with his wife and children by the Bolsheviks in 1918, the last Russian tsar Nicholas II was rehabilitated and buried in Saint-Petersburg in 1998 and canonised in 2000 by the Orthodox Church.

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WNU Editor: Historically speaking the Russian elite has always come from these groups .... the nobility, the land owners, the church, and before the Revolution .... a new group made up of industrialists. All of these elites are now back in power with the exception of the nobility .... they are gone forever. That is why this article and its assertion that some Russians crave a return of a Tsar makes no sense to me .... and doubly so because I do not know anyone in Russia who is interested in having a return to a monarchy. And as for the poll that states that more than 28 percent of Russians are in favor of the country becoming a monarchy again one day .... I will admit that I am scratching my head .... because I do not think even 1 percent who are in favor of it.