Aleksy

The Holy Tsar and his Family.

"I know all about it. The shooting was all over the place. I know that... Medvedev took aim at Nicholas. He just shot at Nicholas ... Anyway, it was just another sentence that had to be carried out, we looked on it as just another chore.7 ... Of course, you start to think about its historical importance . . . In fact, the whole thing was badly organized. Take Alexis, it took a lot of bullets before he died. He was a tough kid."

Execution squad.

These were the memories left by one of the Chekists, who carried out the execution of the Emperor's family on the 17 July 1918 in the basement of the Ipatev House in Ekaterinburg. The leader of the group was Yakov Yurovski.

And this is their boss Yurovski and the basement room in which the execution took place.

The child mentioned in the description of the event was the thirteen year old heir to the throne Alexis. He inherited, after his British ancestors, hemophilia, and was a very sickly child, who was close to death many times and is said to have been saved by Rasputin. It's almost hard to believe that he was so hard to kill.. Despite all of them were Bolsheviks, evidently their hands shook, what is not a good proof of their political backbone.

And by this means brave Chekists enriched the Orthodox Church with quite a few saints. On the 14th of August 2000 the Synodal Canonization Commission on its secret session unanimously voted to canonized the entire Tsar's family murdered in Ekaterinburg: Nicholas II - the tsar, Alexandra - his wife, Alexis - the Crown Prince, and four Princesses - Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia. About the accompanying persons murdered together with the Holy Family there is no mention.
Nicholas II was even canonized twice. because the Russian Orthodox Church Abroad, a rival to the Moscow Patriarchate canonized him in 1981 when communism in Russia was fully in power.

According to Russian traditions, new saints are honored with holy icons.

Saint Alexis

With a blink of an eye one may say that Nicholas II is the first Polish king which was canonized, as he was crowned as Polish king, and Alexis was the last Tsar of Russian Empire, as he died a few minutes after his father. For objective reasons the coronation could not be performed...

And here you may listen to the Anthem of Russian Empire.

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