On July 17, 1998, Yeltsin made a public confession at the funeral of the Tsar in St. Petersburg for the century of wounds inflicted on the people of the former Soviet Union by the violent revolution. The confession is short, but the words are very meaningful for humanity to reflect on tyranny, so they are quoted together.
Dear citizens: This is a historic day, decades after the murder of the last Tsar of the Russian Empire, Nicholas II, and his family, a crime of extreme cruelty about which we have long remained silent, and now the truth must be told.
The massacre at Ekaterinburg has become a page of shame in our history. Now we atone for the transgressions of our predecessors by burying the fallen, repenting for the shameless crime, and repenting for all of us. For no longer can such crimes be justified, no longer can political aims and foolish atrocities be excused, no longer can we deceive ourselves. The execution of the Romanov royal family created a division in Russian society, the consequences of which are left for today. The burial of the remains of the fallen in Ekaterinburg is a just judgment of humanity, a symbol of national unity, and an atonement for the shared participation of many in the atrocity, and all of us are responsible for the history of the nation, which is why I must be here today as president and as an individual. I bow before the spirits of the fallen who were brutally murdered.
To build a new Russia, we must rely on her historical traditions. Many glorious chapters of Russian history are closely linked to the Romanov dynasty, but linked to the name of Nicholas II, there are also bitter lessons – attempts to change people’s way of life solely by violence and destruction.
We must put an end to this century, a bloody century for Russia, the century when Russia lost its harmony. This end will be accompanied by repentance regardless of ethnic, religious and political beliefs, and this is our historical opportunity. On the eve of this twenty-first century, it is necessary to think of our future generations. Let us mourn the innocent victims of atrocities and hatred, and may their souls rest in peace.
Yeltsin’s confession came late, 85 years after the bloody and violent revolution. on July 17, 1998, Yeltsin publicly acknowledged for the first time the great catastrophe that the communist revolution had brought to the people: “For Russia, it was a bloody century, the century when Russia lost its harmony. With this end comes repentance regardless of ethnic, religious and political beliefs, and this is our historical opportunity.” Yeltsin warned from the height of truth, violence, and institutions: “Atonement for the transgressions of those who came before us, repentance for shameless crimes, and repentance for all of us. For no longer can such crimes be justified, no longer can political aims and foolish atrocities be excused, no longer can we deceive ourselves.”
What Yeltsin called “stupid atrocities” had been hidden by the authorities for 80 years. When the layers of gory history were uncovered, they revealed a brutal massacre even more horrific than that of the Nazis. After a killing machine was gently turned by Lenin, it almost broke the laws of science and turned into a perpetual motion machine.
In the first month of Bolshevik rule after the October Revolution, hundreds of thousands of victims died for political reasons, with the Nikolai II massacre in particular highlighting the coldness and bloodshed of a regime. The perpetrator was Lenin, who had been exiled by Nikolai for three years. The three years of exile, even if we use modern civilized standards, did not exceed the standards of humanity. Lenin’s wife recorded in her memoirs that when she visited her husband in Siberia in the 1890s, she found Lenin living a comfortable life, with the Tsarist government paying him 8 rubles a month, slaughtering a sheep every week, raising a dog with extra bones when Lenin got tired of eating, renting a house with his wife, hiring a maid, and hunting. He could also correspond with the rest of the world, write revolutionary articles, and even publish his writings in Russia. So his wife’s first words when she saw him were, “My God! Why have you gained weight!” Beyond that, there is no evidence that the Tsar mistreated Lenin in particular. So Nikolai, on his deathbed, did not believe that he would be executed and asked, “What? What?” .
Hugues Davenport, in his book “The Day That Shook the World”, gives a detailed description of the beheading of the Tsar’s family.
In the early morning of July 17, 1918, the head of the Yekaterinburg secret police, on instructions from the Bolshevik Central Committee, led a dozen robbers to trick the Tsar’s family into assembling in the basement. The girls hurriedly stuffed jewels and other jewelry into their underwear – much of it had been stolen since their arrival in Ekaterinburg. Together with the tsar’s family were their family doctor Eugene Potemkin, court lady Maria Demidova, and a manservant with the cook.
When they reached the basement, soldiers with loaded guns came in. The chief in charge of the execution, Lurovsky, read to them: “Attention, please! The decision of the Soviet of Workers’ and Peasants’ Deputies of the Urals is now announced. In view of the fact that your relatives are continuing their offensive against the Soviet power, the Executive Committee of the Urals has decided to execute you by firing squad.”
Nikolai took a step forward in disbelief and asked, almost stuttering, “What? What?” –The bullet hit him in the face and he was the first to be killed. The bullets hit Nicholas II first, and his wife and children followed. The rest of the imprisoned royal family, such as the Duke, the Duchess, and the Queen of Serbia, suffered the same fate before and after the Tsar’s execution.
The whole family was executed and their bodies were disfigured. Among those killed were the Tsar and his wife, four daughters, a son, a royal physician, and three waiting servants. The four murdered princesses were: Olga, the eldest daughter, 22 years old; Tatyana, 20 years old; Maria, 19 years old; Anastasia, 17 years old; and the youngest prince, Alessias, 14 years old. According to the recollections of the participants, including Voikov, who was ambassador to Poland, the execution was followed by dismemberment, which lasted three days, the bodies were disfigured, dismembered with axes and saws, sprinkled with sulfuric acid, and thrown into the abandoned mine shafts.
To cover up the crime, the authorities later completely destroyed the house where the execution of the tsar was held, and even Ekaterinburg, which honored the tsarina, was renamed Sverdlovsk (it has now been renamed back to its original name). But in the following decades, there was a constant and secret search for the remains of the Tsar’s family. Finally, in 1978, the bones of the tsar and his relatives were found at the site of the extermination and then in the mines, with traces of axe chopping and sawing.
In order to consolidate power, the ruling party went on a killing spree and the atrocities became more and more intense. In 1922, the Bolsheviks deported more than one hundred prominent Russian intellectuals, including Berdyaev and Bulgakov, on board ships in order to hide them from the public eye. In order to supposedly purify the social environment, Lenin also ordered the shooting of more than 200 prostitutes.
After Stalin came to power, he killed people like nobody’s business and reached the peak of fascist tyranny. According to Mr. Wang Kang’s research materials, from 1928 onwards, the “people”, “revolution”, “historical truth”, “security of the motherland”, “human ideals”, and “human rights” were used as the basis for the “revolution”. In the name of “people,” “revolution,” “historical truth,” “national security,” and “human ideals,” a bloody political crackdown lasted for ten years.
One hundred and twenty million peasants were caught up in the historical catastrophe of “collectivization,” and at least ten million peasants and three million children died as a direct result of famine and starvation.
In 1990, the Soviet State Security Committee published a figure of 3,778,234 deaths in the Soviet Union from 1930 to 1953. By 1991, Kryuchkov, the head of the Soviet KGB, announced a figure of 4.5 million deaths in the Soviet Union from 1928 to 1953, during the 25 years Stalin was in power. The historical record is even more appalling: the total number of Russians who died in the 25 years of Stalin’s power was 22 million at the lower limit and 66 million at the upper limit. From 1937 to 1938, the hundreds of days and nights between Bukharin’s arrest and execution, thousands of people were shot in Moscow alone in a single day. The flames of Moscow’s crematoriums rolled on, cremating a steady stream of flesh and blood around the clock. Most of the high-ranking officials, including Bukharin, were executed.
These unprecedented atrocities were kept in a black box until Gorbachev’s administration, when they were revealed to the world, starting with the rehabilitating of Bukharin. The final solution to this problem was Yeltsin, who advocated that “the truth must be told”.
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