Some Russians crave return of monarchy

MOSCOW:

Mikhail Ustinov’s ancestors were executed in 1917 for supporting the tsar but a hundred years later, the 68-year-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 selfproclaimed 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 authoritarian and centralized power,” said the young history teacher from Nizhny Novgorod, a city some 400 kilometers east of the capital.

“A constitutional monarchy allows us to consolidate our traditional values to give strength to the people, who are struggling today,” he said.

Being a monarchist is “inseparable” from the Orthodox faith, the predominant religion in Russia, he added.

And for others, Russia has already become a monarchy of sorts, with President Vladimir Putin reigning over the country for 18 years and widely expected to extend his rule by another six years in a 2018 vote.

“Vladimir Putin is already a tsar, he acts like a tsar,” said Yelena Melnikova, who studies Orthodox icon restoration.

The 22-year-old believes that eventually the monarchy will replace the “political hypocrisy” of today’s Russia and mark the return of “real Russian values.”

‘Need monarchy to save Russia’

Putin himself has flatly dismissed any comparisons to a monarch, saying in 2005 that the title of tsar “doesn’t suit” him.

But he made overtures to the powerful Orthodox Church, which has never opposed the Kremlin on political matters in public.

Critics accuse Putin of paying lip service to the constitutional separation of church and state by