A TSAR IS REBORN

Princess Anne will find in the Soviet Union a new enthusiasm for royalty

Stephen Handelman writes Moscow PRINCESS Anne's arrival in Moscow en route to Siberia — on Thursday evokes ironic memories of the last time a royal personage ventured into the heart of Rus- sia. In August 1917 the recently abdicated Tsar Nicholas II travelled east to Siberia with his family on a journey that seemed, at the time, a relief from the cares of state. He was never, of course, to return. But his diaries suggest that the Romanovs treated the early months of their custody as a temporary inconvenience, to be overcome as soon as Russia came to its senses.

The horrible truth began to dawn on Nicholas when he was roughly evicted from pleasant quarters in the Siberian town of Tobolsk and brought to a smaller house in Ekaterinberg in the Ural mountains. A `good and clean house', he noted grudging- ly of the place in which he and his family were to be murdered four months later, although he looked forward to continuing his daily exercises of chopping wood, and the regular evening game of bezique with the family, he was no longer quite as sanguine about the future. 'I don't even know what to hope for, or what to wish,' he confided to his diary.

This time, the arrangements are con- siderably more predictable. As it happens, Russia is once again caught in the chaos of revolution, but the only surprise in the 13-day royal cavalcade taking Princess Anne from Moscow across the Urals to Lake Baikal in Ukraine is likely to be the pleased reaction of the crowds. After 70-odd years of monarchy-bashing, this country is having second thoughts.

It must be said that nostalgia for the Tsar never completely disappeared. The glitter- ing, renovated royal palaces outside Leningrad testify to the care which the Soviet Union has lavished on selected symbols of its imperial past. But that is nothing compared to the recent flush of royalism.

The first signs of a dramatic change of heart towards things royal appeared last summer, when about 200 people attended a service at a Moscow church to pray for the soul of Nicholas II and to support demands for reburial of the remains of the Tsar and his family in Leningrad. In the months since, the Soviet Union has experi- enced what amounts to a minor royalist revival.

Several newspapers have published let- ters calling for the return of the imperial flag. 'Royal calendars' have gone on sale at some Moscow kiosks, and a monarchist society has come out of the closet, its members achieving particular notoriety during the recent May Day parade in Red Square when they marched past the Lenin

Mausoleum — and a stunned Kremlin leadership — with their slogans and flags. A monarchist newspaper with the some- what wistful title of The Dawn of Russia is circulating in the Volga river city of Kubyshev.

And if Princess Anne wishes, she is welcome to visit an old Moscow mansion where a special exhibition of family snap- shots and mementos of the Romanovs opened just last week. Organisers say they want to show the 'spiritual aspect' of the family life.

The phenomenon is more complicated than it first appears. In the former Soviet imperial satellites of central Europe, the return of old royalty to power is a distinct, if somewhat fantastic, goal of a few politic- al factions. But in the Soviet Union itself, neo-Tsarism affords a chance to explore collective responsibility for the excesses of Russian and Soviet history.

`The Lord said "Vengeance is mine, I will repay," and he did,' commented Alex- ander Minkin, a Moscow News drama critic. 'In the past 72 years all of us, Jews, Russians, Germans, Latvians and Tatars, have had to pay dearly for the killing of innocent children. . . . The Lord never punishes the innocent.' Minkin was ex- plaining the title of one of the most stunning dramas to appear on the Moscow stage in decades, a play about the last days of Nicholas II called Y Az Vozdam CI will repay').

The play, written by a previously un- known playwright named Sergei Kuznet- sov, has been attracting standing-room- only audiences in Moscow's Maly Theatre over the past two months. It is not hard to understand why. Not only does it provide the first 'objective' (read sympathetic) portrait of the last Tsar ever seen on the Soviet stage, it also contains several awk- ward messages for the present-day Russian theatregoer. 'My people are not ready for democra- cy,' announces Yuri Solomin, the actor who plays Nicholas as a tragic victim in mufti. 'They need a strong hand.' The Tsar's doctor warns one of the revolu- tionaries, who happens to be Jewish, of a dire fate. 'You will see,' he says. 'The time will come when everyone will believe that it was the Jews who were responsible for this, and they will be the victims.' Before the play ends, one of the officials guarding the Tsar turns in his revolver on learning that Vladimir Lenin himself has ordered the execution of the family. 'To kill a Tsar without law, and without trial, is to leave a legacy of lawlessness,' he says.

This is difficult material to digest for an audience brought up on simplified school myths portraying Lenin and his fellow conspirators as noble fighters against injus- tice. The Tsar and his family are depicted as poignant, if somewhat misguided, inno- cents trapped by events they only vaguely understand. 'If it weren't for this revolu- tion,' complains the pretty Princess Anas- tasia, 'we'd all be going to a ball right now.' And in what is perhaps the most painful character-portrait of all for a Russian audience, the Tsar's wheelchair-bound son Alexei is seen wondering aloud what will become of them all.

The royal family is butchered, off stage, at the end of the last act, the family has kneeled together to pray and cross them- selves, while local officials prepare for their demise. But Soviet readers could have read several months earlier the grisly circumstances of the deaths. According to one account, published in Soviet Press, the family was woken up at three in the morning and ordered downstairs to the basement of the house at Ekaterinberg. Seconds later a unit of 12 gunmen opened fire. The Tsarevich Alexei was, according to one eyewitness, still alive after the first hail of gunfire. 'He was moaning,' the 'Woke up this morning — it was a bright, cold day in April, and the clocks were striking thirteen.' eyewitness said. `Yurovsky [head of the killing squad] went up to him and shot him, two or three times until he fell silent. The scene made me feel sick. In the end, Yurovsky sent me to get people to clean up the blood in the room.'

For many Soviet commentators and historians the death of the Tsar and the destruction of the Romanov dynasty have come to be a parable of the Revolution's `original sin'. Yuri Solomin, who is also artistic director of the theatre, admits that Y Az Vozddm is less a historical drama than a morality tale for modern Soviet society. 'We wanted our audience to think

about whether the advance to a glorious future we always talked about should be accompanied by cruelty and suffering,' he said. 'We wanted to show that cruelty inevitably devalues human life, and that in the history of our country this has led to mass terror and the destruction of univer- sal human values.' As she makes her way across Russia and Ukraine, Princess Anne may well find herself part of the therapy for a nation struggling to free itself from the dark and haunting ghosts of its past.

Stephen Handelman is Moscow bureau chief of the Toronto Star.