The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie Read Free Book Online Page B

other. Employing his fame as a finder of the grave, Ryabov wrote to Queen Elizabeth II of England, a relative of the Romanovs, asking that she use her influence to ensure that they were buried in a Christian manner. The queen did not reply. In 1991, when Boris Yeltsin, Russia’s new leader, authorized a scientific opening of the burial site, Avdonin met Ryabov for the last time and said, spontaneously, “Come! We are going to exhume them.” Ryabov refused. “Maybe his conscience was bothering him,” Avdonin says. Ryabov cannot be drawn into criticism of Avdonin. On the contrary, he says, “There can be no question of the priceless role of Alexander Nicholaevich Avdonin in this story. No one has doubts about that. He played a monumental role. He was the one who dug up the remains.”
    There it might rest. Except that, in the milky darkness of a Siberian summer night, Avdonin blurted out his true feelings: “betrayal, treachery—just like what happened with Ryabov.”

CHAPTER 4
 
 A CHARACTER FROM GOGOL
    By the autumn of 1989, the physical disintegration of the Soviet empire was under way. On November 9, the Berlin Wall came down. A few weeks later, Václav Havel became president of Czechoslovakia. Within a year, Lech Walesa was president of Poland. Within two years, Communist governments had collapsed or been overthrown everywhere in Eastern Europe.
    On June 12, 1991, the first nationwide election of a political leader in the thousand-year history of Russia took place. Boris Yeltsin, a native of Sverdlovsk, was elected president. When he was inaugurated in the Kremlin on July 10, Yeltsin stripped the ceremony of Communist symbolism. In place of the giant portrait of Lenin that for decades had loomed behind the speakers’ platform, he stretched the white, blue, and red banner given to Russia by Peter the Great. The patriarch of the Orthodox Church blessed Yeltsin with the sign of the cross, saying, “By the will of God and the choice of the Russian people, you are bestowed with the highest office in Russia.” Mikhail Gorbachev was present too, clinging to office as president of the SovietUnion and general secretary of the Communist Party. One month later, Gorbachev survived in office only because Yeltsin climbed onto a tank in Moscow and faced down an attempted army-KGB coup. By December 1991, Gorbachev was gone. The Central Committee of the Communist Party was dissolved. Ukraine, Belarus, Kazakhstan, the Baltic states, and other former Soviet republics had proclaimed their independence. In relative peace, seventy-four years of Communist rule in Russia had come to an end.
    During these years, turmoil and change affected every part of the Soviet Union, including Sverdlovsk. By 1990, the Communists had been expelled from the City Council. Soon after, the site of the Ipatiev House, now a vacant lot littered with a rubble of crushed bricks and stones, was turned over to the local Orthodox bishop. There was talk of erecting a chapel. The local Union for the Resurrection of Russia, a monarchist group, planted a wooden cross on the site. It was torn down by die-hard Communists. Eventually a six-foot metal cross, decorated with pictures of the tsar, the empress, and the tsarevich, was put in its place. Communists did not lose all their influence in the city once known as the “capital of the Red Urals.” The name of the city was changed back to Ekaterinburg, but the name of the region remained Sverdlovsk. The city’s main thoroughfare continued to be called Lenin Avenue, and, at a prominent intersection, there remained a statue of Yakov Sverdlov. *
    After the new president’s election, Ekaterinburg authorities acted quickly to carry out a request from Alexander Avdonin. The regional governor, Edvard Rossel, asked Yeltsin’s permission to exhume the Romanov bones. Yeltsin nodded yes. A delegation of senior officials went to see Dr. Ludmilla Koryakova, the leading professor of archeology at the Ural State University,