MOSCOW, February 21 (RIA Novosti) - A lawyer for the Romanov Family Association said Tuesday that the execution by the Bolsheviks of Russia's last tsar and his immediate family was politically motivated, and insisted that they should be fully exonerated.
"Nicholas II and members of his family were subjected to repression exclusively for political reasons," German Lukyanov said, commenting on the recent refusal by the Prosecutor General's Office to recognize the last Russian monarch as a victim of political repression.
"The Bolsheviks saw the tsar as a class enemy. [Their leader Vladimir] Lenin called for Nicholas II's execution back in 1903, at the 2nd congress of the RSDRP [an acronym standing for the Russian Socialist Democratic Workers' Party, a predecessor of the Bolshevik Party]. It was then that the decision to execute him was made, and precisely for political reasons."
He said that the 1918 execution by firing squad was more than an ordinary case of homicide.
Commenting on the refusal by the Prosecutor General's Office to class the tsar and his family as victims of repression, Lukyanov said it was not substantiated by reference to any specific regulatory act, and could not therefore be considered valid.
He also accused the prosecutors of delaying the transferal of the case to a high court, as prescribed by Russia's law on the exoneration of political repression victims.
On Monday, Romanov Family Association spokesman Alexander Zakatov confirmed that the Prosecutor General's Office had rejected a request from Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, who heads the Romanov association, to clear Nicholas II of all political charges brought against him by the Bolsheviks.
The office responded by saying "there is no credible evidence proving the existence of any official decisions by judicial or non-judicial bodies to exert politically-motivated repression" against the emperor and members of his inner circle.
The Romanov association, headed by a daughter of the last grand duke in the Romanov dynasty, advocates the revival of the Russian throne, suggesting that a new monarch should be elected by general vote of the Russian people, not necessarily from the Romanov-Gottorp line.
