Free Republic

In Wilson's War Message to Congress on 2 April, 1917, Woodrow Wilson said the following: A steadfast concert for peace can never be maintained except by a partnership of democratic nations. No autocratic government could be trusted to keep faith within it or observe its covenants. It must be a league of honour, a partnership of opinion. Intrigue would eat its vitals away; the plottings of inner circles who could plan what they would and render account to no one would be a corruption seated at its very heart. Only free peoples can hold their purpose and their honour steady...

"A Defense Department DNA identification lab has helped bring to a close a near-century-old mystery, laying to rest a search for the remains of two children executed alongside the rest of the family of Russia’s last czar." "Now, the lab has again helped the Russian government by identifying the remains of those two children, found last year in a shallow grave about 70 feet from the larger gravesite."

MOSCOW (AP) — Russia's highest court on Thursday refused to recognize the executed last czar Nicholas II and his family as victims of political repression — a ruling Kremlin critics said was dictated by the government's reluctance to condemn the bloodiest chapters of the country's Communist past. The Supreme Court upheld repeated rulings by lower courts and prosecutors that the 1918 slaying of the czar, his wife and their five children by a Bolshevik firing squad was premeditated murder, not a political reprisal, said German Lukyanov, a lawyer for the royal family's descendants. "This is an illegal decision," Lukyanov told...

MOSCOW - There is a "high degree of probability" that bone fragments found recently near the Russian city of Yekaterinburg are those of a daughter and son of the last czar, forensics experts said Friday. If confirmed, the find would fill in a missing chapter in the story of the doomed Romanovs, who were killed after the violent 1917 Bolshevik Revolution ushered in more than 70 years of Communist rule. The fragments were found by archaeologists in a burned field near the Ural Mountains city where Czar Nicholas II, his wife, Alexandra, and their five children were held prisoner by...

Russia dig finds 'tsar's family' 13-year-old Prince Alexei would have been the heir to the throne Russian archaeologists believe they may have found the remains of two children of Russia's last tsar, executed by the Bolsheviks in 1918. DNA tests will be carried out on the bones, thought to be those of Prince Alexei and his elder sister Maria. Archaeologists excavated ground close to the site in Yekaterinburg where the tsar, his wife and their three other daughters were found in 1991. The prosecutor-general is reopening an investigation into the case. Archaeologist Sergei Pogorelov says bullets found at the burial...

MOSCOW: Prosecutors announced Friday that they have reopened an investigation into the circumstances surrounding the deaths of the last Russian czar and his family nearly 90 years ago after an archaeologist said the remains of the czar's son and heir to the throne at last may have been found. The announcement of the reopened investigation, while a routine matter, signaled that government may be taking the claims — announced Thursday by Yekaterinburg researcher Sergei Pogorelov — seriously. In comments broadcast on NTV, Pogorelov said bones found in a burned area of ground near Yekaterinburg belong to a boy and a...

MOSCOW — The remains of the last czar's hemophiliac son and heir to the Russian throne, missing since the royal family was gunned down nine decades ago by Bolsheviks in a basement room, may have been found, an archaeologist said Thursday. Bones were found in a burned area in the ground near Yekaterinburg, the city where Czar Nicholas II and his wife and children were held prisoner and then shot in 1918. A top local archaeologist said the bones belong to a boy and a young woman roughly the ages of the czar's son, Alexei, and a daughter whose remains...

MOSCOW - The remains of the last czar's hemophiliac son and heir to the Russian throne, missing since the royal family was gunned down nine decades ago by Bolsheviks in a basement room, may have been found, an archaeologist said Thursday. Bones were found in a burned area in the ground near Yekaterinburg, the city where Czar Nicholas II and his wife and children were held prisoner and then shot in 1918. A top local archaeologist said the bones belong to a boy and a young woman roughly the ages of the czar's son, Alexei, and a daughter whose remains...

Thousands of Russians marked the 87th anniversary of the assassination of Nicholas II, paying tribute to the last Russian tsar, who was shot by a firing squad. Orthodox Christian priests led groups of observant Russians, Cossacks and others in processions in Moscow and Kiev. In Yekaterinberg, long lines of regally clad priests marched through the Siberian city to the site where Nicholas II and most of his family were killed on the night of July 16-17, 1918. Hundreds jammed into Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral to participate in ceremonies. Nicholas abdicated in 1917 as revolutionary fervor swept Russia, and he...

On the Anniversary of the Murder of the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II and His Royal Family "Come, take up the cross, and follow me." said our Lord Jesus Christ to His followers, to all Christians. And for these last millennia, many souls faithful to Christ had answered this call. One of those few who to a greater degree, or at least with greater clarity in emulating Christ with his labor [podvig], fulfilled this call of the Lord was our martyr, the Sovereign Emperor Nicholas II Aleksandrovich, killed forty-three years ago. Significance is assigned more accurately to historical events not in...