Victory Day in the House of Romanoff
A great date in the history of all humanity is fast approaching: the 70th anniversary of victory in the Great Patriotic War. The entire world—even our former enemies—today show their respect for the courage and self-sacrifice of the people of the USSR, who played a fundamental role in this great victory. Approximately 40 million of our countrymen of various nationalities gave their lives to assure a bright future for humanity, for the chance to end forever bloody wars and world conflicts.
But decades have passed and there have appeared those who wished to revise the results of the Second World War, to find “new” architects of the victory, and to defame the heroes and raise on the pedestal of honor the names of traitors and collaborators. So the Foreign Minister of Poland now questions the right of Moscow to host a Victory Parade and furthermore claims that Auschwitz was liberated by “Ukrainians”; and in Ukraine, which is now torn apart by great turmoil and civil war, instead of honoring veterans, they glorify bandits and gangsters; and Bandera and Shukhevych, who openly collaborated with the Nazis, have become national heroes. Especially despairing are the so-called Baltic “patriots,” who are desecrating the graves of, and destroying the monuments to, Soviet soldier-liberators. In Riga, Vilnius, and Tallinn, walls are covered with graffiti, including even the vile swastika.
One could also cite other examples of the distortion of historical truth. Some publishers use clever words and the veil of a false patriotism to spread various sensational “discoveries,” which turn out, in the best case, to be nothing more than wild and irresponsible interpretations, and in the worst case, outright slander.
Labeling dissidents as “traitors” and “enemies of the people” became the fashion during a dark time in our country’s history. But even those working on the ideological front lines alongside M. A. Suslov would be troubled by how some today engage in such brazen fantasies.
One hardly need defend the notion that genuine patriotism cannot be based on outrageous lies and distortions of reality. Only the objective analysis of real factors can identify the true heroes and the actual traitors, and clarify the causes of the tragic events of the epoch of the Second World War.
Nor has the Imperial House of Romanoff been immune to these kinds of insinuations after it found itself in exile after the revolution and by chance and circumstance was closely linked to the first wave of Russian emigration. Recently in the media there have appeared a series of plainly false stories, some claiming even that the Head of the dynasty, Grand Duke Wladimir Kirillovich, lived until the end of the war in the same bunker as Adolf Hitler. Soon I am sure we will learn that that it was he who performed the last duty to the Führer and lent him his pistol….
Historical evidence and archival documents completely refute “sensations” of that sort. To recount in detail the patriotic position and activities of the Imperial Family in exile, and to illuminate some of these more sensitive issues of Russian history, we have asked the Director of the Chancellery of the Imperial House and noted historian, Dr. Alexander N. Zakatov, to speak to us.
Let me begin our conversation by saying that many of our so-called “patriots” accuse some in the first wave of the Russian emigration of wholesale treason and collaboration. Does that correspond with the facts, as you know them?