The Tide of Foreboding....

"A large share of the church commission members have no doubts that the murder was ritual."
"Bolsheviks and their allies engaged in the most unexpected and diverse ritual symbolism."
"The most rigorous approach to the version of ritual murder, a significant part of the church commission [on Nicholas II’s killing during the Russian revolution of 1917] has no doubt that this murder was ritual."
Father Tikhon Shevkunov, Orthodox bishop, Russian Orthodox Church

Bishop Tikhon Shevkunov, who has suggested Nicholas II's killing was a 'ritual murder,' stands in front of a photograph of the tsar and his family in 2015.   Credit: Alexander Zemlianichenko/AP Photo

Conspiracy theories abounded with the dissolution of the United Soviet Socialist Republics. It doesn't take much imagination when people cast about looking for some group to blame for the unfortunate expiration of a widely discredited social experiment that captured weaker nations in its web of satellites within the Communist empire and distinguished itself through millions of deaths, hundreds of thousands of exiles, countless incarcerations in gulags, a total upheaval of social convention, dismissal of religion, and the wreckage seen in agriculture and manufacturing.

Jews spearheaded the Bolshevik revolution; their persuasive capacities were so powerfully influential that they were capable of storming a palace, overcoming imperial guards, capturing and kidnapping a royal family, sequestering and then murdering them, persuading through violent force millions of people that their futures were assured by succumbing to the perfection of the Communist program of equal work for equal distribution while the elite among them lived lavishly without lifting a finger other than to command loyalty.

Butchering the intelligentsia, the aristocrats, the business tycoons and any who opposed this wholesale transformation of society to reflect the imaginings of a clique of experimental theorists hungry for power and prestige did wonders for public trust. While awakening a keen interest and approval from among the intellectuals, scholars, aristocrats and literary figures of the West who marvelled at the simplicity of the theory and its wonderful outcomes, lending their support to the venture with enthusiasm if not their own actual sacrifices.

Bishop Tikhon and Patriarch Kirill accompany Vladimir Putin on a visit to the Sretensky Monastery in scow in May. Credit: Alexei Druzhinin/Kremlin Pool Photo via AP, File

The Medieval world of Christianity was awash with miserable slanders against Jews, accusing them of all manner of ritualistic horrors, among them the infamous blood libels -- that Jews practised the sacrifice of gentile children, draining their blood which they then used to make matzoh. The Russian Catholic Church hasn't moved much beyond its Medieval legends characterizing Jews as 'Christ-killers'. Under Vladimir Putin, the Russian Orthodox Church has seen a renaissance of respect and recognition as a state religion.

Ironically, under Vladimir Putin the plight of Jews in Russia has been relaxed, with the state moving against the kind of anti-Semitism that was rife during the days of the Soviet Union. Another reality is that the Russian Revolutionary leaders were weighted with the presence of Jews among them in the hierarchy of revolutionaries and atheists bringing equality to the masses through communism. Since the Church was denigrated, demeaned and dismissed in the USSR years, it takes the presence of Jews among the Communist hierarchy as responsible for their near-demise.

And in the process appear to be edging toward making Jews responsible for the murders of Czar Nicholas, the Czarina and their five children, attributing the murder to a sacramental ritual killing with which supposedly Jewish ceremonials are linked in a mendacious and bigoted anti-Semitism traditional in Russia where that same Church often incited its faithful to launch deadly pogroms. Father Shevkunov appears to head a Russian Orthodox church panel tasked with examining those 1918 murders.

And in his statements it seems that he is preparing the world for the conclusions that will be reached by his committee after examining the records available to pinpoint those responsible for the shameful event. "A large share of the church commission members have no doubts...", he stated; this, before they even begin to consider all the data they will have assembled; what the panel is doing, then, is preparing to assemble 'evidence' of their belief.

Concurrently, a representative of the Investigative Committee representing Russia's top state investigative agency also plans to conduct an independent probe of their own into the theory. It will be simply understandably coincidental should they both agree that the 'theory' of sacramental murder otherwise known throughout history as an infamous blood libel, to be factual, flying in the face of historical truth and reality.

Conflating the fact that Jews were intimately involved with the Communist Revolution, that some or one might have been present at the scene of the murders, with Jewish sacramental ritual of draining blood from Christians for use in preparing ceremonial food for a Judaic religious festival is so   insane in its manifold absurdities it would be laughable if it were not so seriously frightening for the possible consequences.