There are people who drink every week, but do not overdo it.
Drinking in moderation usually means consuming 7-14 standard drinks per week. In Britain, this is the equivalent of six pints (3.4 liters) of medium-strength beer or seven glasses of wine. British Health Service advice states that regular consumption of no more than 14 portions per week is associated with a low level of health risk.
Light drinkers are those who consume between one and seven drinks per week. (In Russia, a standard dose/serving contains approximately 10 grams of pure alcohol. This value may differ in different countries - approx. BBC).
So, is it okay to drink in moderation?
The research results are quite contradictory, so there is no direct answer to this question. Some researchers claim that one to two drinks a day (especially red wine) may provide health benefits. Other scientists are skeptical about this.
Research, the results of which were published in the publication British Medical Journal, suggest that moderate drinkers are less at risk of dementia compared to light and heavy drinkers. However, the reason may lie in the fact that these people tend to lead a generally healthy lifestyle, smoke less often and eat better.
Another study by US scientists suggests that even moderate alcohol consumption may increase the risk of dementia.
BBC fact check
In most countries, there are standards for safe alcohol consumption recommended by the Ministry of Health - they, however, vary greatly in different cultures. Edition British Medical Journal published another study, adding further confusion to an already rather contradictory picture. This study found that people who did not drink alcohol in middle age were more likely to develop dementia in old age than those who drank moderately during those years.
Does this mean that non-drinkers, for the sake of their own health, should now start hitting the bottle? Answer: almost certainly not.
There are several reasons why the findings of this study should be treated with caution. Firstly, its authors can only state the fact that among the people monitored, more non-drinkers fell ill with dementia than drinkers. But they cannot claim that abstaining from alcohol alone causes dementia. Some people in this group may have been heavy drinkers in the past, or they may have given up alcohol for health reasons.
One of the human rights under the law is the right to truthful information. Including those relating to religious life, the important role of which in society has long been recognized by sociologists.
It's no secret that such a phenomenon as religion can have not only a positive, but also a negative side. After all, there are so-called “totalitarian sects” that pose a threat to society. Of course, a person must be aware of the dangers posed by such religious organizations; in this case, “forewarned is forearmed.” However, information about them must be as reliable and objective as possible, otherwise it will not bring benefit, but harm, turning people against each other without good reason.
Unfortunately, such inaccurate information appeared on the site and was copied by other sites and reprinted by some media outlets. We are talking about the rating of “The 10 most dangerous sects in the world”, in which Seventh-day Adventist Christians were included along with truly dangerous sects like Aum Shinrikyo.
What did the author (or authors) of the rating tell readers about Adventists? Let us quote this publication (the text differs slightly on different sites, but the main content is the same): “The Seventh-day Adventist Church arose in 1844 in the United States. In the reference book “Modern Heresies and Sects in Russia,” Seventh-day Adventists are defined as a sect of American origin that is adjacent to Baptists and has a special affinity for the Old Testament.
The founder of Adventism was an ordinary farmer, William Miller. While studying the Bible, he came to the conclusion that the end of the world would soon come. In 1818, he determined the year of the death of the world: according to Miller’s calculations, it should have been 1843. At the same time, the founder of the Adventist sect was not at all embarrassed when he was reminded of the words of Christ that no one can know either the day or the hour of His Second Coming.
In the 90s, a tragedy occurred in the United States when about a hundred Adventist sectarians died. The drama occurred in 1993 in the Texas town of Waco, where the leader of the Branch Davidian branch of Adventism, David Koresh, settled down with a group of his followers. He had been prophesying the imminent end of the world for too long, and the prophecy “had to come true”... But the failed messiah, naturally, did not want to leave himself, so he blew himself up along with his flock. When the fire ended, about a hundred corpses were found under the ruins, including at least 25 children.”
It is surprising not only that in this ranking one of the world-recognized Protestant churches - the Seventh-day Adventist Church - is unreasonably ranked among the “most dangerous sects in the world”, but also that the author of the publication grossly distorts the facts. One might assume that for a person unfamiliar with the history of Adventism, the example of David Koresh would be sufficient reason to have a negative view of Seventh-day Adventists. Therefore, let us subject the publication's statements to critical analysis.
Of course, the reader is primarily interested in finding out what really happened in the town of Waco and whether Adventists were really involved in this matter, but let’s leave this incident “for dessert” and first look for answers to other equally important questions. After all, the picture must be objective. So:
How did the SDA Church come into being? Is it a cult?
To answer this question, you first need to understand what a sect is.
So, according to V. Dahl’s Explanatory Dictionary, a sect is “a brotherhood that has accepted its own, separate teaching about faith; agreement, interpretation, schism or heresy.” “SECT (from Latin secta - teaching, direction, school) is a religious group, community that has broken away from the dominant church. In a figurative sense, a group of people isolated in their own narrow interests,” adds the Big Encyclopedic Dictionary. He characterizes the SDA not as a sect, but as a church: “ADVENTISTS (from the Latin adventus - advent), Protestant church.” According to some authors, many sects develop into churches over time, so the word “sect” is hardly applicable to organizations that are more than 100-200 years old. From this point of view, the SDA cannot even be said to be a sect at the beginning of its emergence, since initially it was not an organization that broke away from any other “mainstream” denomination. The Adventist movement (the movement of those who expected the imminent Coming of Christ), thanks to the sermons of William Miller, arose simultaneously in many denominations, and therefore the first Adventists cannot be historically considered as a sect. William Miller himself said: “My labors were never aimed at creating any new doctrine or exalting one doctrine over another ... Most of the converts, thanks to my labors, joined the various existing churches” (quoted from the book by E. White, The Great Controversy, p. 272). When this movement was not supported by the denominations to which the early Adventists belonged, it was only then that the need arose to create a new organization, which was later called the Seventh-day Adventist Church (which means “The Church that awaits the Second Coming of Christ and observes the Seventh-day Sabbath”). Thus, the SDA can be characterized not as a sect that broke away from another church, but as a Protestant church formed on the basis of a movement of Christians awaiting the Second Coming of Christ in the mid-19th century.
Do Adventists speculate on the idea of the “end of the world”?
It's no secret that many destructive religious organizations intimidate people with the imminent end of the world. How do Adventists feel about this event?
They are confident that Christ revealed the future to his disciples not in order to frighten them, but so that they would be prepared for what would soon begin to come true and, on the contrary, would not be afraid: “You will also hear about wars and rumors of war. See, do not be horrified, for all this must happen, but this is not the end yet: for nation will rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom; and there will be famines, pestilences and earthquakes in places; yet this is the beginning of diseases” (Matthew 24:6-8). It seems that in the light of events around the world, which are reported daily by the media, the words of Christ do not need comment and it is unlikely that anyone will deny the need to be morally prepared for these crises.
As for the beliefs of William Miller, who believed that Christ should come at the time he calculated, this was before the emergence of the Seventh-day Adventist Church as an organization that subsequently never set dates for the Second Coming and condemns such practices.
In E. White's book The Great Controversy, Miller's mistake in getting the date right but misinterpreting its meaning is compared to the disappointment of Christ's disciples, who believed that He should take the royal throne in Jerusalem, and instead saw Him crucified. Just as the mood of the disciples before Christ’s entry into Jerusalem is not a reason to reject Christianity, so Miller’s mistake is not a reason to reject Adventism as the message of the nearness of the Second Coming. This is why Adventists did not disappear after the disappointment of 1844, but formed the SDA Church, preaching about the imminent return of Christ to earth.
Is it possible, based on any criteria, to classify the SDA among the “most dangerous sects in the world”?
In the reference book “New religious organizations of Russia of a destructive and occult nature” (Information and Analytical Bulletin No. 1. 2nd edition, revised and supplemented - Belgorod, 1997. - 459 pp.), the authors make a clear distinction between the concepts of “sect ” and “totalitarian sect”: “Most new religious movements can be called sects as they come from (branches from) any traditional religions, and this word does not carry the characteristics of such an organization as something bad. On the contrary, religious sects can have a culture-forming influence on the traditions of peoples, themselves gradually turning into powerful religious positive movements, differing from the mother religion only in some dogmas. An example here is Protestantism.” In this directory, published with the blessing of His Grace John, Bishop of Belgorod and Stary Oskol, Chairman of the Missionary Department of the MP ROC, a negative attitude is expressed only towards those religious groups that are characterized by destructiveness and cause moral, psychological or physical harm to their followers. And since in the publication about “The 10 Most Dangerous Sects” Adventists are called “aligned with Baptists,” then let us allow ourselves one more quote from the same reference book: “no one will deny that one cannot equate, for example, Evangelical Christian Baptists with such an organization , like the “Church of Scientology”, behind which... there is a trail of litigation all over the world.”
So, neither Evangelical Christian Baptists nor the SDA Church fit the definition of “totalitarian sects”, and are not included in the directory of organizations of a destructive and occult nature.
How does the creed of Seventh-day Adventists differ from the teachings of “totalitarian” sects?
It is this aspect that is important for those who do not want to delve into the study of church dogmas. After all, any dogma can be proclaimed, but the fruits of the teaching are always evident. Does the organization “churn out” weak-willed zombies, or does it form a healthy, integral personality capable of working for the good of society?
Seventh-day Adventists, unlike adherents of destructive cults, do not deify their leaders, believing that only God - the Father, Son and Holy Spirit - is worthy of religious worship. Based on the words of the Bible, “there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus” (1 Tim. 2:5), Adventists are convinced that no religious leader has the right to occupy the position of Messiah, or mediator between God and his flock, so that access to God was only through him. To communicate with Christ, sincerity is enough (“Come to Me, all you who labor and are heavy laden, and I will give you rest” (Matt. 11:28)), therefore the salvation given by Christ is not considered by Adventists as a privilege exclusively for members of the SDA church (this is very important unlike destructive cults, which teach that you can only be saved by being their supporters).
The Seventh-day Adventist Church encourages independent thought in the study of Scripture, rather than accepting dogmas solely on faith. This attitude contributes to the formation of independent critical thinking, capable of resisting attempts to pass off human ideas as Divine. Adventists have no prohibition on reading literature of other faiths or communicating with those who are not supporters of Adventism. The principle of testing by Scripture (“Turn to the law and the revelation. If they speak not according to the word, there is no light in them” (Isa. 8:20)), applies to any person, no matter how outstanding a religious leader he may be. On the contrary, in destructive cults it is forbidden to question any words and ideas of leaders who are considered infallible a priori.
In “totalitarian” sects, what is beneficial to the sect is often considered right, regardless of whether it is moral or not. According to Adventists, the requirements of God's moral law - the Ten Commandments - are unchanged, both in the Old and New Testaments, therefore breaking the commandments in anyone's interests is a sin. Adventists observe the seventh day of the week, Saturday, precisely for this reason: “For this is the love of God, that we keep His commandments” (1 John 5:3). In God's law, all commandments are equally important, and it is obedience to them that forms a healthy member of society.
The Seventh-day Adventist Church also opposes the occult, spiritualism, magic, hypnosis and all kinds of psychotechnics with the help of which the leaders of destructive organizations maintain control over their members. Man was created free, and no one has the right to enslave his will.
If we talk about the social side of the Seventh-day Adventist faith, Adventists highly value family and friendship ties, which are not destroyed, but, on the contrary, strengthened if a person follows God's will. Adventists can be friends with people of other faiths, not only with representatives of Protestant churches, but also with Orthodox and Catholics, despite differences in views. This is the commandment of Christ: “As I have loved you, you also must love one another. By this everyone will know that you are My disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13; 34:35).
The SDA Church is not a closed organization, but actively participates in the life of society, helping people through medical and social ministries, as evidenced by many letters of gratitude from citizens.
What do the Branch Davidians and the David Koresh incident have to do with Adventism?
We have come to the most interesting moment in the publication about “10 dangerous sects”. A fact that is easy to verify. So, who is David Koresh?
As mentioned in many sources, the leader of the Branch Davidian cult (real name Vernon Hovell) claimed to be the Messiah, and his pseudonym David Koresh signifies his desire to become like the powerful kings of antiquity - David and Cyrus. Members of the Branch Davidian sect stocked up on weapons in anticipation of the end of the world, which is why in 1993, in the American town of Waco, an armed confrontation between adherents of the sect and government authorities became possible, which ended in tragedy - the explosion of the Branch Davidian residence. But is this sensational sect identical to the Seventh-day Adventists, as stated in the publication?
Let's turn to the sources. In Dmitry Taevsky’s reference book “History of Religion,” the “Branch of David” is defined as “an American Christian sect. It originates from the Southcottites. The sect’s belief is based on the expectation of the imminent end of the world and, as a consequence, suicidal tendencies.” The Southcottites, in turn, are “a Christian sect. Founded by the English prophetess Joanna Southcott, who pretended to be the "woman clothed with the sun" and the "wife of the lamb" from the Apocalypse. In 1814, Southcott declared herself pregnant with the Holy Spirit. When the pregnancy turned out to be false, she died of shock...” (ibid.).
It is easy to see that the Seventh-day Adventist Church has nothing truly in common with either the Branch Davidian or Joanna Southcott, despite the apparent similarity of ideas about the imminence of the end of the world. If the members of the “Branch of David” stocked up on weapons, which already indicates their aggression, then Seventh-day Adventists are convinced that preparation for the Second Coming is not a physical, but a spiritual struggle, requiring the application of the same moral efforts that John the Baptist preached about in his time : “Produce fruit worthy of repentance.” Any extremist ideas and sentiments associated with the end of the world are condemned by Seventh-day Adventists. In addition, the leaders of the above-mentioned religious cults exalted themselves to the point of deification, urging them to believe fabrications that were in no way consistent with Scripture and common sense. Christ warned about such and others like them: “For false Christs and false prophets will arise and show signs and wonders to deceive, if possible, even the elect” (Mark 13:22).
Careful study of the signs of the Second Coming contained in the Gospels, as well as in the prophetic books of Daniel and Revelation, according to Adventists, will allow a Christian not to fall into the trap of false Christs and newly-minted messiahs, will help to avoid the networks of “totalitarian” sects and the influence of demonic cults.
As for false sensations, the greatest of them, according to Adventists, will not be another unverified rating of “creepy sects,” but the coming of Satan himself under the guise of Christ, accompanied by supernatural phenomena, it’s not for nothing that the destroyer of souls has been training for centuries, “ taking the form of an angel of light." And here, without understanding what Christ actually taught, the deceiver cannot be exposed. Trust but check…
After all, the laws of spiritual life are as real as physical, chemical, biological, and any other laws operating in this world. A man jumped from a balcony and broke his leg. I put my hand into the fire and got burned. I spent the night drunk on the ice and froze my kidneys.
Exactly the same thing happens with violation of spiritual laws. Judgment of other people, envy, lies, pride, indifference to other people's troubles - all these and many other of our sins would have destroyed us long ago if not for the intervention of God, stopping their deadly consequences. And that small part of them that He still allows us to experience, we call a test. And we are very afraid that it will disturb our peace. In much the same way, a person who drinks a glass of sulfuric acid, eats a couple of spoons of arsenic and remains unharmed after that, may worry: whether the Lord will send him a runny nose or a migraine for spiritual growth.
Our torment is the matter
But there are situations when a person’s suffering is not a consequence of his own sinful life. We all interact with each other in one way or another, our destinies are intertwined into a bizarre pattern and in some cases become so common that the consequences of someone else’s sin are taken on by a person who was not involved in this sin. When tempted, no one should say: God is tempting me; because God is not tempted by evil and does not tempt anyone Himself, but everyone is tempted by being carried away and deceived by his own lust(James 1 :13–14). These words of the Apostle James simply and clearly explain the cause of the disasters that befall us, as well as the degree of God’s involvement in these disasters. This degree is zero. God does not tempt anyone. Lust here means any movement of the human heart towards sin.
The Monk Mark the Ascetic writes: “The guilt of every sorrowful event that encounters us is the thoughts of each of us; I could say that both words and deeds; but since they do not occur before thought, therefore I attribute everything to thoughts. Thought precedes, and then through words and deeds communication is formed between us and our neighbors. Communication is of two kinds: one comes from anger, and the other from love. Through communication we perceive each other, even those we do not know, and taking upon ourselves (our neighbor) is necessarily followed by sorrow, as the Divine Scripture says: vouch for your friend, betray your hand to the enemy (Proverbs 6 :1). Thus, everyone endures what befalls him not only for himself, but also for his neighbor - in that in which he took it upon himself.”
It is worth talking about these two types of taking upon oneself grief for the sins of others - out of malice and out of love - in more detail.
There is a spiritual law at work in acceptance out of malice, which Mark the Ascetic formulates as follows:
“Taking on one's neighbor, which comes from malice, happens involuntarily. And it happens like this: he who deprives his neighbor of something, although he does not want it, takes upon himself the temptations of the deprived; in the same way, the slanderer - the temptations of the one slandered by him, the slanderer - the slandered, the despiser - the despised, the liar takes upon himself the temptation of the one whom he slandered, and in order not to list everything separately, I will say briefly: everyone who offends his neighbor, in proportion to the offense, takes on himself the temptation of the one he offends "
This is one of the amazing revelations of God, which the world outside the Church does not know about at all. We can say that when we intentionally cause harm to another person, then at the same time we move the switches on the rails, sending the train of consequences of this person’s sins in our direction. And don’t let scammers of all stripes, dishonest officials, bandits, hooligans and ordinary boors who take pleasure in humiliating other people delude themselves with the hope of impunity. Even if they manage to circumvent all legal laws, they will not be able to avoid retribution according to the spiritual law. And in addition to the sorrows for their own sins, they also receive the sorrows of all the people they have offended.
The second option for taking on the troubles and suffering of your neighbor is through love. Here the essence of the action of the spiritual law is already more clear. Having loved a person, we accept him entirely, with all his sins and shortcomings. His problems become ours, his grief our grief. A simple example is that a young man marries the girl he loves and suddenly finds out that she has an overdue loan, on which the bank has already calculated draconian interest. Will he tell her: “You know what, honey, I’m sorry, but these are your problems. You got yourself into trouble, get out of it yourself”? Or will he help solve these problems by selling his new car and withdrawing all the money from his own bank account?
Love introduces us to the territory of the life of our loved ones, into their circle of events and circumstances, making this life of theirs part of ours. And, unfortunately, in this territory there are not only beautiful flowering gardens, but also dense thickets of all kinds of weeds and thorns, which can seriously injure you. The consequences of the sins of the people we love inevitably become our sorrow. However, in this case we are not talking about any spiritual improvement, but only about the fulfillment of the main law of love, without which it simply dies: Bear each other's burdens, and thus fulfill the law of Christ(Gal 6 :2).
We ask for peace in our hearts
Sometimes the causal connection between specific sins and the disasters that befall us is quite obvious. But in general (taking into account God’s mercy and two ways of accepting sorrows for the sins of others), the overall picture of all spiritual causes and consequences in a person’s life turns out to be so complex that trying to “read” it is a task obviously doomed to failure. And yet, probably even the most convinced atheist or agnostic will not deny such a connection.
The Monk Ambrose of Optina wrote: “No matter how heavy the cross that a person bears, the tree from which it is made grew from the soil of his heart.”
He also has a more detailed explanation of this aphoristic thought:
“When a person... follows the straight path, there is no cross for him. But when he retreats from him and begins to rush first in one direction, then in the other, then different circumstances appear that push him again onto the straight path. These shocks constitute a cross for a person. They are, of course, different, depending on who needs which one.”
Fearing that God will intervene in our lives and deprive us of peace, we stumble over our own sins many times every day. And we don’t see that we are saved from a crushing fall and injury only by the intervention of God, who carefully picks us up - sometimes right at the ground. These human stumblings and Divine protection from their consequences usually form what we are accustomed to calling a calm, quiet life in harmony, peace and joy for our family and friends.
And, by the way, in its liturgical texts the Church repeatedly turns to God with a request for precisely this silence, peace and harmony. Thus, in the Great Litany Christians pray “... about the goodness of the air, about the abundance of the fruits of the earth and times of peace, ... About freeing us from all sorrow, anger and need.” and finally - “...About the peace of the whole world.” These prayers are repeated many times during all services. But in none of the many church prayers will you find even a hint of a request to God to send us trials and suffering. We provide ourselves with these bitter fruits of a sinful life in abundance. And in order not to perish under their weight, we ask: “... Intercede, save, have mercy, and preserve us, O God, with Your grace.”
Such prayers testify to a fairly simple and obvious truth: rest, peace, joy and harmony are not the natural background of the life of humanity affected by sin. All of these are gifts of God, the result of His intercession, gracious help and constant participation in our destinies.
Here we have come close to the most important point, which precisely determines the Christian attitude towards suffering and troubles. The Lord Jesus Christ does not just protect us from suffering. He took upon Himself all the consequences of human sins, accepting terrible torment and death on the Cross for us. And when Christians talk about the need to participate in the sufferings of Christ, we are again not talking about some kind of spiritual improvement or growth. Interceding for us, the innocent Christ suffered for our sins and took upon Himself our guilt and pain. Therefore, by participating in His suffering, we only take upon ourselves that small part of the responsibility for our sinful life, which He considered feasible for us. It would probably be comfortable to hide from suffering behind the Cross of Christ all your life, but it would be dishonorable even by human standards. Realizing that it is we who sin, and the Lord suffers for us, we would eventually simply hate ourselves for such an unscrupulous life. And God gives us another opportunity - taking up our cross and following Him. Please note that he is offering to take his own, not someone else’s. And by no means to the fullest extent, but only what we can really bear without breaking. And He Himself is always next to each of us, in order to, on occasion, pick up the weak, console the despairing, and strengthen the faint-hearted.
And about spiritual growth and perfection, Saint Ignatius (Brianchaninov) said in very brief words all the most important things:
“There is nothing perfect among men according to human virtues: the Cross of Christ leads to Christian perfection... Humility raised the Lord to the Cross, and humility lifts the disciples of Christ to the cross, which is holy patience, incomprehensible to carnal minds, just as the silence of Jesus was incomprehensible to Herod, Pontic Pilate and Jewish bishops.
Let us pray to the Lord that He would reveal to us the mystery and grant us the love of His Cross, that He would grant us the power to properly endure all the sorrows that God’s all-good Providence will allow us in time for our salvation and bliss in eternity. The Lord promised us: He who endures to the end will be saved. Amen".
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Why is there so much noise around the murder of the royal family again? Is it true that someone survived? Shameful questions about the execution of the Romanovs
At the end of November, the media again began to write a lot about the circumstances of the death of the royal family. This topic is also being discussed at the Bishops' Council of the Russian Orthodox Church taking place in Moscow. Additional attention to the topic was attracted by the statement of the senior investigator of the Investigative Committee for particularly important cases, Marina Molodtsova - on November 27, she said that the investigation was considering, among other things, the version of “ritual murder.” The execution of the royal family is undoubtedly one of the most important episodes in the history of Russia in the 20th century. At the request of Meduza, journalist and associate professor at RANEPA Ksenia Luchenko, the author of many publications on this topic, answered key questions about the murder and burial of the Romanovs.
How, in general terms, did the execution take place? How many people were killed?
The execution of the royal family and its entourage occurred on the night of July 17, 1918 in the house of engineer Ipatiev in Yekaterinburg. 11 people were killed - Tsar Nicholas II himself, his wife Empress Alexandra Fedorovna, four daughters - Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia, son - Tsarevich Alexei, Romanov family doctor Evgeniy Botkin, cook Ivan Kharitonov, valet Aloysius Trupp and maid Anna Demidova.
The execution order has not yet been found. Historians have at their disposal a telegram from Yekaterinburg, which says that by decision of the Uralsovet (local government body), the tsar was shot because the enemy was approaching the city and the discovery of a White Guard conspiracy. Experts believe that the decision was made not by the Urals Council, but by the party leadership. The execution was led by the commandant of the Ipatiev House, Yakov Yurovsky.
Grand Duchess Olga and Tsarevich Alexei on the ship "Rus" on the way from Tobolsk to Yekaterinburg. May 1918, last known photograph
Wikimedia Commons
Is it true that Tsarevich Alexei was the last to die?
Yes, if you believe the story of security guard Pavel Medvedev, who witnessed the execution. During the murder, Yurovsky sent him outside to check if shots were heard. When Medvedev entered the room, he found everyone already dead, and Tsarevich Alexei was still groaning, and Yurovsky finished him off with a revolver in front of Medvedev’s eyes (from Medvedev’s testimony, see page 186). The archives contain the memoirs of another participant in the murder, Alexander Strekotin: “The arrested were all lying on the floor, bleeding, and the heir was still sitting on the chair. For some reason he did not fall from his chair for a long time and remained alive.” Yakov Yurovsky in his report (known as “Yurovsky’s note”) says that not only Alexei, but also his three sisters, the “maid of honor” (maid Demidov) and Doctor Botkin had to be “finished off.”
They say that bullets bounced off the diamonds on the princesses' belts. It is a myth?
Apparently that was the case. In any case, Yurovsky wrote that the bullets “bounced off something like a ricochet and, like hail, jumped around the room. When they tried to kill one of the girls with a bayonet, the bayonet could not pierce the bodice.” According to Yurovsky, the security officers who participated in the execution immediately began to appropriate the belongings of the dead, and he had to threaten them with execution so that they would return the stolen property. Jewels were also found in Ganina Yama, where Yurovsky’s team burned the personal belongings of the murdered (the inventory includes diamonds, platinum earrings, thirteen large pearls, and so on).
Grand Duchesses Maria, Olga, Anastasia and Tatiana in Tsarskoe Selo, where they were kept in custody. With them are Cavalier King Charles Spaniel Jemmy and French bulldog Ortino. Spring 1917
Pierre Gilliard / Wikimedia Commons
Is it true that their dogs were shot along with the royal family?
Of the three dogs that belonged to the royal children, who were in the Ipatievs’ house on the night of July 17, only one survived - Tsarevich Alexei’s spaniel Joy. They even managed to transport him to England, and he lived out his days at the court of King George, cousin of Nicholas II. On July 25, 1919, at the bottom of a mine in Ganina Yama, the corpse of a small dog was found well preserved on the ice. Her right leg was broken and her head was pierced. The English teacher of the royal children, Charles Gibbs, who helped Nikolai Sokolov in the investigation, identified her as Jemmy, the Cavalier King Charles Spaniel of Grand Duchess Anastasia (Gibbs, however, calls him “a dog of the Japanese breed”). The French bulldog Ortino, who belonged to Grand Duchess Tatiana, was also killed.
How were the remains of the royal family found?
Soon after the murder of the royal family, Yekaterinburg was occupied by the army of Alexander Kolchak. He ordered to investigate the circumstances of the murder and find the bodies. Investigator Nikolai Sokolov studied the area, found fragments of burnt clothing of members of the royal family and even described a “bridge of sleepers”, under which a burial was found several decades later, but came to the conclusion that the remains were completely destroyed in Ganina Yama.
Photo No. 70. An open mine at the time of its development. Ekaterinburg, spring 1919
In 1928, the old Bolsheviks took Vladimir Mayakovsky to the “grave of the Romanovs,” who asked to show “where the people put an end to the monarchy.” He wrote a poem “Emperor”, which contains the following lines: “Here the cedar is re-planed with an ax, / Notches under the root of the bark, / At the root under the cedar there is a road, / And in it the emperor is buried.”
The remains of the royal family were found only in the late 1970s, and Mayakovsky’s poem played a role in this. These lines gave film screenwriter Geliy Ryabov, who was fired up with the idea of finding the remains, a rough idea of what the burial site should look like. Of course, this was not his only source. Ryabov was the author of the script for the film “Born of the Revolution” and wrote a lot about the Soviet police, so he enjoyed the patronage of the Minister of Internal Affairs Nikolai Shchelokov and had access to classified documents. He saw materials from a book by investigator Sokolov published in Europe.
In 1976, Ryabov came to Sverdlovsk, where he met local historian and geologist Alexander Avdonin. It is clear that even the scriptwriters favored by the ministers in those years were not allowed to openly search for the remains of the royal family. Therefore, Ryabov, Avdonin and their assistants secretly searched for the burial place for several years.
Burial place of the royal family in Porosenkovy Log. Ekaterinburg, 1919
Nikolay Sokolov / Wikimedia Commons
The son of Yakov Yurovsky gave Ryabov a “note” from his father, where he described not only the murder of the royal family, but also the subsequent scrambles of the security officers in attempts to hide the bodies. The description of the final burial site under a flooring of sleepers near a truck stuck on the road coincided with Mayakovsky’s “instructions” about the road. It was the old Koptyakovskaya road, and the place itself was called Porosenkov Log. Ryabov and Avdonin explored the space with probes, which they delineated by comparing maps and various documents. In the summer of 1979, they found a burial and opened it for the first time, taking out three skulls. They realized that it would be impossible to conduct any examinations in Moscow, and keeping the skulls in their possession was dangerous, so the researchers put them in a box and returned them to the grave a year later. They kept the secret until 1989. And in 1991, the remains of nine people were officially found. Two more badly burnt bodies (by that time it was already clear that these were the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria) were found in 2007 a little further away.
Is it true that the remains of the royal family may not be their remains? They say someone could have survived and escaped
This is out of the question. On January 23, 1998, the Prosecutor General's Office presented the government commission led by Deputy Prime Minister Boris Nemtsov with a detailed report on the results of the study into the circumstances of the death of the royal family and people from its circle. The document presented the results of various examinations - historical, microosteological, ballistic, traceological, forensic dental, anthropological, molecular genetic and others. And the general conclusion was clear: everyone died, the remains were correctly identified.
On July 18, 1998, members of the royal family were buried in the Catherine's chapel of the Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. After the remains of Tsarevich Alexei and Grand Duchess Maria were found in 2007, most of the examinations were carried out anew at a more modern level.
The most convincing, although not replacing all others, examination is genetic. Mitochondrial DNA isolated from the found remains (sequences of 16 thousand nucleotides) and objects of comparison - Prince Consort Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, great-nephew of Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, two descendants of the Romanov dynasty - Countess Ksenia Sheremeteva-Sfiri and a representative of the ducal family of Fife ( who wished to remain incognito), separated from Emperor Nicholas II by four and five generations, respectively.
The remains of the royal family in the premises of the forensic medical examination office. Ekaterinburg, 1997
Sovfoto / Universal Images Group / REX / Vida Press
Then a group of geneticists led by the head of the human genomics department of the Institute of General Genetics of the Russian Academy of Sciences, Evgeniy Rogaev, conducted research on the Y chromosome, which they could not do in the 1990s, and this made it possible to trace kinship on the paternal side. First, they established the relationship between the remains of Nicholas II and Tsarevich Alexei, compared them along two independent lines of relatives - the Romanovs, descended from the children of Nicholas I. And again everything coincided, including a rare mutation - heteroplasmy. The DNA of Nicholas II was compared with samples of his brother Georgiy Alexandrovich, and his nephew - the son of Olga's sister Tikhon Nikolaevich Kulikovsky-Romanov, and with blood from the tsar's shirt, stored in the Hermitage. The mitochondrial genome was re-deciphered: DNA isolated from the blood of Nicholas II matched DNA from the bone of a skeleton attributed to his remains.
In the 90s, examinations were carried out in the best genetic laboratories in the world at that time - at the Forensic Center of the UK Ministry of Internal Affairs in Aldermaston and the Military Medical Institute of the US Department of Defense in Washington. In the 2000s, Michael Cobble, head of the DNA Identification Laboratory of the US Armed Forces, and the laboratory of Walter Parson from the Medical University of Innsbruck got involved. Professor Evgeny Rogaev worked at the Institute of General Genetics in Moscow and at the University of Massachusetts Medical School.
And all these researchers are 100 percent sure that the 11 remains found were attributed correctly and no one survived.
The Russian Orthodox Church canonized the royal family. Why don't they recognize the authenticity of the remains?
Indeed, in the Church it is customary to say “the so-called Ekaterinburg remains.” In mid-January 1998, Boris Nemtsov, his adviser Viktor Aksyuchits and investigator Vladimir Solovyov met with the patriarch and told him for two hours about the work of the government commission and its conclusions. Both Soloviev and Aksyuchits recall that the patriarch replied: “You convinced me.” But a few days later, Metropolitan Yuvenaly, who represented the Church in the commission, issued a statement that the research results “cannot be accepted with absolute certainty.” And then the Synod decided that the commission’s decision “raised serious doubts and even confrontations in the Church and society.” The Patriarch did not go to St. Petersburg for the funeral. Since then it has been believed that “the Church does not recognize the remains.” Only Metropolitan Yuvenaly knows the answer to the question of what happened in those days in mid-January. But he is silent.
In the fall of 2015, the Investigative Committee again reopened the twice-closed case of the murder of the royal family. The investigation is still ongoing; within its framework, the remains of Nicholas II and Alexandra Feodorovna were already exhumed in the Peter and Paul Cathedral and the grave of Alexander III was opened to compare the DNA of the father with his son and grandchildren; examinations are being carried out again, including genetic examinations. All this happens in the presence of representatives of the Patriarchate, which has formed its own commission on the issue of the remains of the royal family.
Probably, the state decided to meet the Church halfway in order to finally close the issue with the remains and bury Alexei and Maria. Experts from the Investigative Committee are now presenting the results of research (many of which are 20 years old) to the bishops of the Russian Orthodox Church. At the same time, the composition of the church commission is classified, the Investigative Committee also does not give comments, it is not even known what kind of research and who is redoing it.
The official position, which is broadcast by all church speakers, starting with the patriarch: “The only thing that stopped us from recognizing the results of the examinations was the opacity of the research process and the complete reluctance to include the Church in this process. That is, we were asked to simply believe in the results of the research - naturally, the Church was not happy with this.”
There is also an unofficial position. For example, at a conference that took place on November 27 at the Sretensky Monastery, representatives of the Orthodox community said: people feel that these are not the same remains - people do not want to venerate the relics, they feel rejected. In addition, conspiracy theories are very common, partly related to the version of “ritual murder”, and partly to the fact that the state was too hasty in recognizing the remains as genuine in the 1990s. After the canonization of Nicholas II and his family, a ritual of their veneration developed: holy places - a temple on the site of the house of Ipatiev and Ganin Yama, where, according to legend, the bodies were burned. Neither the Catherine's chapel of the Peter and Paul Cathedral, nor Porosenkov Log, where the remains were found, are yet included in the number of holy places.
What is this version about the “ritual murder” of the royal family?
There is a typical anti-Semitic myth that Jews allegedly kill people for ritual purposes. And the execution of the royal family also has its own “ritual” version.
Finding themselves in exile in the 1920s, three participants in the first investigation into the murder of the royal family - investigator Nikolai Sokolov, journalist Robert Wilton and General Mikhail Diterichs - wrote books about it.
Sokolov cites an inscription he saw on the wall in the basement of the Ipatiev house where the murder took place: “Belsazar ward in selbiger Nacht Von seinen Knechten umgebracht.” This is a quote from Heinrich Heine and translates as “On this very night Belshazzar was killed by his slaves.” He also mentions that he saw there a certain “designation of four signs.” Wilton in his book concludes from this that the signs were “kabbalistic”, adds that among the members of the firing squad there were Jews (of those directly involved in the execution, only one Jew was Yakov Yurovsky, and he was baptized into Lutheranism) and comes to the version about the ritual murder of the royal family. Dieterichs also adheres to the anti-Semitic version.
Wilton also writes that during the investigation, Dieterichs assumed that the heads of the dead were severed and taken to Moscow as trophies. Most likely, this assumption was born in attempts to prove that the bodies were burned in Ganina Yama: teeth that should have remained after the burning were not found in the fire pit, therefore, there were no heads in it.
Royal family. 1904
Boasson and Eggler/Wikimedia Commons
The version of ritual murder circulated in emigrant monarchist circles. The Russian Orthodox Church Abroad canonized the royal family in 1981 - almost 20 years earlier than the Russian Orthodox Church, so many of the myths that the cult of the martyr king had acquired in Europe were exported to Russia.
In 1998, the Patriarchate asked the investigation ten questions, which were fully answered by the senior prosecutor-criminologist of the Main Investigation Department of the General Prosecutor's Office of the Russian Federation, Vladimir Solovyov, who led the investigation. Question No. 9 was about the ritual nature of the murder, question No. 10 was about the cutting off of heads. Soloviev replied that in Russian legal practice there are no criteria for “ritual murder,” but “the circumstances of the death of the family indicate that the actions of those involved in the direct execution of the sentence (choice of the place of execution, team, murder weapon, burial place, manipulation of corpses) , were determined by random circumstances. People of various nationalities (Russians, Jews, Magyars, Latvians and others) took part in these actions. The so-called “Kabbalistic writings have no analogues in the world, and their writing is interpreted arbitrarily, with essential details being discarded.” All the skulls of those killed were intact and relatively intact; additional anthropological studies confirmed the presence of all cervical vertebrae and their correspondence to each of the skulls and bones of the skeleton.