Maybe your gr gr grandfather would tell you to leave for Russia now. I was poking around the net, and that was one of the odd places suggested for people who feel they might want to leave the country didn't seem so much because of the economy but other things. There is inflation around Moscow (and Siberia, too, I think), but you can buy a house, granted probably not like ours, in one of the smaller villages for $1,000 to $5,000. I have no idea what life would be like there, think restrictive in some ways but freer than ours in other ways.
Did you ever find out what happened to him?
Hmmmm, the bad thing about Russia now is they are too much tied to the oil market, I know they have industry over there, they do make cars and such but beyond that, oil and military stuff, they don't seem to make too much. I do plead ignorance on knowing their whole economy but I just feel that Russia should diversify a bit. Still, they do have a flat income tax, an idea advocated by Steve Forbes and many libertarian and conservative groups. Also, I think you can even own an automatic weapon over there all you do is buy it. I think in some ways, they are freer than us, other ways not.
My great, great grandfather, well, I never knew what happened to him although if I could go back in time and go against him to save the Romanovs, I would. I would try my best not to harm him physically, but I believe doing the right thing is the most important of all and what happened to the Royal Family was very terrible. No one deserves to die like that unless they are really, really horrible, I think they were innocents caught up in a terrible time and Nicholas II tried to do the right thing but the libs back then hated him so much, well, you know what happened.
Here is a site I found on Olga:
http://www.livadia.org/trw/olga/
I've also had other ancestors from Russia as well, my grandmother's mother was a Russian Jew who had two villages burned out form under her during the pogroms.
I don't want to be your relative's judge; of course you wouldn't want to harm him plus he probably had nothing to do with that.
Perhaps I spoke out of turn; all I know about Russia is what I've read which is patchy. I don't know what they make for export (other than oil and possibly wood), but for the tourist industry and probably natives as well they make a lot of beautiful wooden products, usually birch, matriosha (sp?) dolls, bowls, samovars (boy had a senior moment on that), beautiful shawls (I have one my sister gave me), can't think of what all else.
I think you are right in what you said, you know how it is when hate is drummed into you and it takes on a life of its own. Thanks for the link to Olga's scrapbook; I looked at a lot of the photos of her.
I read elsewhere that it was -81F in one part of Siberia today, hard to imagine temps that low.
I picked up several books and artistic items on ebay a few years back. My screen name comes from one of the books which I loaned my son and never got back. It was about a little Russian fox named Aliska which became almost tame and a household pet, they took it to the country for the summer, had to go back to their city home and left it with neighbors to look after it. It disappeared shortly after, kind of sad. They bought the little fox at an outdoor market like our flea markets.