The Execution of Tsar Nicholas the 2nd

The year after the Russian Revolution, the execution of Tsar Nicholas the 2nd and his wife and children in July 1918 was also a pivotal moment in world history.

Not only did it usher in 70 years of Communist rule over Russia, but many people saw the murderous episode as the final nail in the coffin for the autocratic imperial dynasties whose vast empires once held sway over almost all of pre-modern Europe…

However, following the collapse of the Soviet Union in the late 1980s, the disinterred bodies of the former Tsar and his family were brought from their original unmarked grave, and reinterred in state in the Peter and Paul Cathedral in Saint Petersburg, where they remain today, posthumously canonized by the Russian Orthodox Church.

The house where the imperial family was executed in Yekaterinburg has also since been razed to the ground, and a grand church raised up in its place, the Church of All Saints.  The dead may be dead, but in Russia as elsewhere, the past is still very much alive…