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Members of the Romanov royal family plan to return to Russia to help develop civil society and charitable programs -- but no longer make a claim to restore the monarchy, Alexander Zakatov, director of the Romanov Emperor House Chancellery, said Friday.
"The emperor's house is faithful to the idea of monarchy, but we are not going to peddle it to anyone," Zakatov told reporters.
"Yet coming to its native land, working in cultural, charitable and other nonpolitical programs for Russia's benefit -- that is what the house is able and indebted to do," he said, Interfax reported.
Zakatov represents Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna and members of her family, who live in Madrid, the city where she and her son Georgy Mikhailovich were born.
Her family members are relatives of Russia's last tsar, Nicholas II, and they fled to Finland during the 1917 Revolution.
Nicholas II abdicated the throne in March 1917, and he, his wife and their five children were executed by Bolshevik soldiers in the basement of a merchant house in Yekaterinburg in 1918.
In October 2008, the Supreme Court declared Nicholas II and his family to be victims of political repression.
Most contemporary Romanovs live in Western Europe, though the chancellery works in Moscow as a nongovernmental organization.
Tsar's Heirs Look to Aid Civil Society
29 June 2009
The Moscow Times
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