Only 19 shots to be fired at Czar Nicholas' reburial

By Gwynne Dyer

LONDON (JP): When they rebury Czar Nicholas II in St. Petersburg on Friday, only 19 shots will be fired over his coffin, not the customary 21.

That is because he abdicated after the revolution, and was no longer technically Czar when the Bolsheviks slaughtered him, his wife, and three daughters in a cellar in Yekaterinburg exactly 80 years ago.

But it's also emblematic of the rapid downgrading of an event that was once seen as the key to Russia's reconciliation with its dreadful past. As the man who found the royal family's bones, Alexander Avdonin, said: "I did not believe -- and everybody can see it now -- that we were ready for this."

A 19-shot salute is not the worst thing that has happened to Nicholas lately. The bones that were dug out of a burial pit near Yekaterinburg in 1991 are definitely his: their authenticity was confirmed by DNA tests carried out by Russian, British and American scientists. But the Russian Orthodox Church says otherwise, because it is trying to close the rift between the Moscow hierarchy and the Orthodox Church Abroad, which venerates other 'Romanov relics'.

Patriarch Alexei II undoubtedly knows that the bones being re-interred in St. Peter and St. Paul Cathedral on Friday are genuine, but in the interests of church unity he has withheld recognition of that fact. No senior churchman will attend the service, only normal parish clergy will officiate, and the deceased will only be buried in a side chapel, not the main body of the cathedral.

It started with the Church, but the defections spread fast. President Boris Yeltsin isn't going to St. Petersburg for the funeral, or any of his ministers except Boris Nemtsov (who headed the commission that identified the remains). In this time of desperate economic crisis in Russia, it might play badly to be seen in the company of the crowned heads of Europe. But they needn't have worried; few foreign monarchs are coming either.

The government has promised to hold the cost of the entire ceremony under US$1 million, there will not be continuous television coverage, and Friday will be a normal working day in Russia. It all seems like a pretty shabby send-off for poor old Nicholas.

But that depends on how you feel about the man who wrecked the 20th century.

History does not run on rails. The Third World War might have happened, wrecking all of our futures, but it didn't. World War I might not have happened -- in which case there would have been no Bolshevik Revolution, no rise of fascism, probably no World War II either. But it did happen, and Nicholas was the man who made it inevitable.

The trigger was elsewhere, in the Balkans, when a terrorist with official Serbian backing assassinated the heir to the throne of Austria-Hungary on June 28, 1914.

The Serbs, then as now, were suffering from an overload of aggressive nationalism. The Austro-Hungarians, while genuinely appalled by the murder of Archduke Franz Ferdinand and his wife, were also glad of an excuse to whack their neighbors on the snout -- quite hard. (For a modern analogy, think of the U.S. and Libya).

Austria-Hungary sent an ultimatum, and mobilized its troops on Serbia's border. The Germans, who were allied to Austria- Hungary, sent a message to the Russians (who were allied to the Serbs) saying they would stay out of the fight if Russia did. And now Nicholas had the one big choice of his life to make.

He could let his murderous little ally take a severe beating, and take some short-term damage to Russia's 'prestige' and its diplomatic positions in the Balkans. Or he could mobilize, declare war on Austria-Hungary -- and drag the whole European alliance system into war.

Europe was not trembling on the brink of war in 1914. It was actually less tense than it had been in years: some of the worst disputes between the great powers had been settled, and others were moving in that direction. But the way the alliances and the military plans worked, mobilization by any great power meant that all the great powers would be forced to go to war.

Mobilization is not technically war, but in practice it came to the same thing in 1914. Once the railways delivered all those millions of conscript troops to the borders, they had to march across them to make room for the next load arriving at the railhead. It was a lovingly constructed doomsday machine, with all the internal consistency and basic lunacy of nuclear deterrence.

Nicholas knew that, and he knew that the Serbs didn't deserve help, and he didn't want war. He strongly suspected that if war came, Russia would lose. Early in the crisis he said: "Everything possible must be done to save the peace. I will not be responsible for a monstrous slaughter."

But Nicholas was also a weak and indecisive man with a desire to appear strong. So even though his generals were divided on the advisability of going to war, he ordered mobilization once -- only to cancel it at the last minute.

And then, on July 30, as his chief of staff was once again explaining the risks of a major war, Nicholas made his grand gesture, his bid to be a man among men. "I will decide," he snapped. "General mobilization."

The World War I, the Bolshevik Revolution, the Russian Civil War, the Great Purges, the World War II -- Nicholas signed his own and his family's death warrants that day, of course, but he also signed warrants for the deaths of about 100 million other people, around 40 percent of them Russians. Just to prove that he was decisive.

For an absolute monarch, there can be no excuses. So on the whole, I think 19 shots over his coffin is quite enough.