"Who cares?," one might ask. This woman and her family care, and so goes the World:
"Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who styles herself as the head of the Romanov imperial line, filed suit last month after prosecutors closed a probe into the murder of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, and his family, shot dead by the Bolsheviks in 1918.The lawsuit is part of her protracted standoff with Russian prosecutors, who have closed the investigation for the second time on the grounds that too much time has elapsed since the killing.
The 56-year-old Maria Vladimirovna, who was born in Madrid and divides her time between France and Spain, believes a resumption of the criminal case is essential for Russia to come to terms with its blood-soaked Soviet past.
At the heart of her legal battle is a question that continues to divide Russians more than 90 years after the Romanov dynasty's downfall: should the slaying of Nicholas and his family be considered a common crime or an act of political persecution?"
"The death of one man is a tragedy; the death of a million is a statistic." - Joseph Stalin
"The first Romanov remains were recovered outside the Urals city of Yekaterinburg in 1991, following the Soviet collapse. A probe into the murder was opened in 1993, but was quietly suspended in 1997. The royal remains were buried a year later at a lavish ceremony in St. Petersburg's Peter and Paul Cathedral.
The investigation was reopened in 2007, after the discovery of two more bodies thought to be the remains of two of Nicholas's children.
Today, most Russians see the killing as part of a brutal campaign of repression by the Bolsheviks. But many still argue that Bolshevik rule had not been firmly established in the chaotic aftermath of the 1917 revolution and that the killers had not acted at the direct behest of revolutionary leaders. The murders, they argue, cannot constitute a politically motivated crime."
An egregious argument, at best, borne of fallacy & revision, but one the old communist elite and their bureaucratic descendants will fight hard to preserve. "Politically motivated" is central to Bolshevism, with death & destruction the reward for any who dissent. Concepts like "unalienable rights, limited government, and due process" are foreign to its spread. All but the most obtuse, ivory tower academia highlight the hundreds of millions murdered by communist regimes over the decades. Whatever atrocities committed in the name of religion are miniscule by comparison.
The Bolsheviks murdered Tsar Nicholas II and his family. Is it time to make amends?
"Post-Soviet Kremlin leaders have not entirely shied away from denouncing the last tsar's murder and the horrors of Soviet repression.
Russia's first president, Boris Yeltsin, speaking at the 1998 burial of Nicholas and his family, urged Russians to repent for a "bloody century." The current president, Dmitry Medvedev, likewise condemned those who still defend the Stalinist regime and warned against attempts to write the millions of Soviet repression victims "out of history."
These words, however, have yet to translate into any legal condemnation of Soviet-era criminals, including the killers of Nicholas, his wife, and children. Judging by the embattled probe into the Romanov massacre, the chances of that happening soon appear slim."
Or it could simply inflame old wounds, between old enemies.
From January, this year: Yushchenko brings Stalin to court over genocide.
"Kiev’s Court of Appeals has found Josef Stalin and other Bolshevik leaders guilty of genocide against the Ukrainians during the famine, or “Holodomor” as it is called in Ukraine, of 1932-33."
Moscow didn't appreciate that too much.