Russia’s royal saints return

Growing up as a baby boomer with an interest in history, I had no doubt about the permanence of the Soviet Union and of communism. Russia’s tsars and tsarists, by contrast, belonged to ancient history, together with such quaint names as St. Petersburg.

But the past 30 years have witnessed the rapid restoration of many aspects of old Russia, including many of those long-dormant names. Still more surprising has been the rise of a new cult of royal saints in Russia, together with many kinds of medieval-seeming devotion.

By most accounts, Russia’s modern history began in 1918 with the murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family in the city of Ekaterinburg, and the slaughter of many more relatives and followers over the following days. That was, it seemed, the beginning of a Bolshevik modernity.