FamilyFeud

June 30, 1998

Monarchy's Heirs Inherit Family Feud

By Alice Lagnado

"All happy families resemble one another, but each unhappy family is unhappy in its own way."
- Leo Tolstoy, "Anna Karenina"

The 54 Romanovs who are expected to fill the Saints Peter and Paul Cathedral for the funeral of Russia's last tsar this July fit into the latter category, but this is no ordinary family quarrel. They are divided by a bigger debate: Who, if anyone, should assume the throne in the unlikely event of a return to the monarchy in the country?

The long-running row has formed a distinct split in the Romanov clan, who have largely resettled in Europe and the United States in attempts to pursue a gentrified lifestyle now uncommon in Russia.

On one side of the split stands Grand Duchess Leonida Georgiyevna, 84, and her daughter Grand Duchess Maria Vladimirovna, 45, an Oxford graduate who lives in Madrid with her son, Prince Georgy Hohenzollern-Romanov, 17.

These Romanovs believe that they are the closest relatives of Nicholas II, and that Georgy should therefore become Tsar of Russia.

Maria Vladimirovna has openly courted the press, and with some success: She has often been referred to by Western journalists as the most senior member of the Romanov family, and Georgy has been mentioned as the most commonly recognized heir to the throne.

On the other side of the fence stands Grand Duke Nikolai Romanovich Romanov, 76, who, as a republican, does not believe in the restoration of the monarchy in Russia - even though he would be a strong contender for the throne were that to happen. In St. Petersburg, he is represented by Ivan Artsishevsky, a businessman who is also the head of the city's commission on the tsar's burial.

A French-born landowner, he lives in Switzerland and heads the Union of the Members of the Romanov House, an organization that unites the 42 holders of the Romanov family name who are opposed to Georgy's pretension to the throne.

According to Artsishevsky, there are several possible candidates for the throne were monarchy to be an option, including Nikolai, and none of them have better credentials than the other.

"There is no monarchy and now there cannot be one," he said in an interview at his home last month. "Moreover, why the Romanovs, and why this particular branch? All we are looking at are the political and financial aspirations of certain individuals."

Nikolai's supporters include the eminent intellectual Dmitry Likhachov, who wrote a letter to President Boris Yeltsin in 1997 condemning the attempts of Maria Vladimirovna to secure official status for her side of the family, which would have allowed them to live in Russia and take part in state events on a formal level.

Likhachov was motivated to write to the president by one particular event: In June of that year, monarchists shelved the ceremony in which Georgy was to have sworn the tsars' traditional oath of loyalty they took at 16, at the Ipatyev Monastery in Kostroma.

It was in this city, 600 kilometers southeast of St. Petersburg, that the Romanov dynasty was created in 1613 when Mikhail Romanov, aged 16, was appointed tsar and grand prince of all Russia by the Zemsky Sobor, or "Assembly of the Land."

Likhachov and others believe that Georgy cannot be the heir apparent because the teenager's great-grandfather, Kirill Vladimirovich - who in 1924 proclaimed himself head of the Russian Imperial House - had earlier married his cousin, therefore relinquishing his right to the throne, according to the rules of the Russian Orthodox Church.

Kirill was exiled by Nicholas II, because of his choice of bride, and though the last tsar eventually took him back into the country he did not bestow on him inheritance rights.

Russian émigrés also traditionally dislike Kirill because he is seen as sympathetic to the Bolsheviks, and marched with the Red Guard in 1917.

Georgy's grandfather, Vladimir Kirillovich, married a Georgian woman, Leonida Georgiyevna, who was not a member of a ruling royal house. So he, too, had broken the rules of succession. Vladimir was a cousin of Nicholas II and his closest known relative.

There are other arguments, too - when Paul I died he decreed that the rights to succession would only pass down the male line, thus making Georgy, whose link to the Romanovs is via his mother, redundant.

Georgy's fans say Likhachov has got the rules of succession wrong - and have even been given tacit support by Yeltsin, who apparently signed a decree recognizing Georgy, his mother and grandmother as the official Romanov family with Georgy as the next tsar.