Some Russians crave return of tsar

MOSCOW (AFP) – Mikhail Ustinov’s ancestors were executed in 1917 for supporting the tsar but a hundred years later the 68year-old yearns for the return of monarchy to Russia.

“Russians are monarchists in their soul, even though the Soviets tried to destroy our soul,’’ Ustinov, who is a self-proclaimed spokesman for the Moscow monarchist community, told AFP in his small apartment on the outskirts of the Russian capital.

Since the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991, Ustinov has dressed in stylized military fatigues in a nod to the officers of the Tsarist army who were fiercely loyal to the monarch and heavily persecuted after the October Revolution.

Executed with his wife and children by the Bolsheviks in 1918, the last Russian tsar Nicholas II was rehabilitated and buried in Saint-Petersburg in 1998 and canonised in 2000 by the Orthodox Church.

“I want to die wearing my uniform and declaring love for the tsar, like my grandfather, great-grandfather and all of my family,’’ said Ustinov, a portrait of Nicholas II behind him.

Ustinov said his family was decimated during the revolution, which he calls a ‘’coup d’etat.’’

More than 28 percent of Russians are in favor of the country becoming a monarchy again one day, according to a study by VTsIOM, a state pollster, released in March. That figure increased from 22 percent in 2006.

Monarchy sympathizers are especially prevalent among the younger generation: 33 percent among those between 18 and 24 years old and 35 percent of 25-34 year-olds.

“We see clearly that the ‘Soviet’ generations resist this idea more than the younger people, for whom monarchy is one possible system of governance,’’ said sociologist Stepan Lvov who helped organise the poll.