ST PETERSBURG, Sept 28: Russia reburied the mother of the last czar on Thursday nearly 90 years after the Bolshevik revolution forced her into exile.
Empress Maria Fyodorovna fled Russia after her son, Czar Nicholas II, was murdered by Bolsheviks. She died in her native Denmark with a last wish to be buried with her family in her adopted homeland.
That request was finally fulfilled as the coffin with her remains was lowered into the imperial crypt in the St Peter and Paul Cathedral next to her husband Alexander III. The cathedral is last resting place for the Russian tsars since Peter the Great.
“Perhaps this should have happened 80 years ago but history did not allow it ... Now her heart has been laid to rest in Russian soil,” said senior Orthodox church clergyman Archpriest Mikhail Protopov after the ceremony.
Russia’s President Vladimir Putin asked Denmark four years ago to hand over Maria Fyodorovna’s remains to Russia. She was buried with full military honours in a service overseen by the head of the Russian Orthodox church.
A choir sang the Orthodox liturgy as mourners sprinkled soil onto her plain wooden coffin. The marble cover of the crypt was then moved back into place. Artillery guns fired a salute and flags flew at half-mast.
The burial in St Petersburg comes at a time when Russia is enjoying a surge of prosperity and confidence and is keen to reconnect with the grandeur of its imperial past.
“The fact that we have been able to rebury Maria Fyodorovna shows that we live in a new Russia which is strong and united and is starting to rise again,” said Valentina Matviyenko, governor of St Petersburg, in a funeral address.
The burial closes a chapter in Russian history left open for decades: the former empress was the only ruler from the last 200 years of the Romanov dynasty not buried in the crypt.
Unless Russia revives its monarchy — something opinion polls suggest is unlikely — she will now be the last Russian royal to be buried there.
Nicholas II and his family were reburied in the cathedral in 1998 after scientists identified them from remains thrown into a pit in the Ural mountains.
Putin himself did not attend the burial. An aide said he had been unable to find space in his diary.
Maria Fyodorovna was born as Princess Dagmar into Denmark’s royal family. She changed her name and converted to Russian Orthodoxy when she married the man who later became Russia’s Alexander III.
She fled southern Russia on board a British warship in 1919 as Bolshevik forces approached. Biographers said she always refused to believe her son had been murdered.—Reuters
