From a conversation with Prince Golitsyn

From a conversation with Prince Golitsyn
about the results of the work of the State Commission.

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The last session of the State Commission took place on the 30 January. A report about its findings were handed over to the President and the President ordered the preparation of all the official documents. It is obvious that a decision will be taken after this about the place of burial and that, as soon as possible it will be Saint Petersburg.
The Commission acknowledged that the remains are those of the Tsar family. These are the results of a wide spectrum of experts. The investigations were carried out in most areas of medicine with the participation of well known doctors, professors, English and American scholars. I do not have the grounds not to trust medicine. I believe it is possible to trust the results of the English laboratory - they could hardly have mixed things up.

But what was important in my opinion and I have always talked and written about this up until two weeks before the final session of the Commission was that the Commission and investigation should have answered those questions, which the vast majority of the general public would call dubious. Maybe there are not many such questions, there are however unfortunately some.

There are investigations, which are contradictory. I know, for example of two earlier published variations on the notes of Yurovskii. I found a lot of questions there. However a copy of these notes was never handed over to the Commission, I never saw one. There are some disagreements in the evidence of Avdonin and Ryabov in different publications. I took up this question twice. I cannot understand the role of either the one or the other. Only Advonin gave evidence in the Commission. Ryabov was never invited.

I have also never seen any documents showing how the whole procedure of the removal of the fragments took place, how they ended up with the panel of experts or what parts of the skeleton they came from. The investigation does not comment this matter in any way. I do not completely understand why the investigation has avoided the study of these questions. There are many people, especially abroad, who are uncertain about whether these remains really have been examined. They need to be convinced. It seems to me in a moral sense as though the Commission was forced to remove these questions.

The impression I had that the conclusion of the examining officer-criminalist – is not a legal document, but a literary work and that it is totally unprofessional, complicated matters. I am surprised because a prosecutor-criminologist wrote it and the language should be legal and it should be proved not from the point of view of emotions but on the grounds of legal examinations. I honestly do not find it satisfactory.

I am deeply convinced that there will be a decisive wave of dissatisfaction, we already know that the foreign commission has categorically refused to accept the findings of our commission, the Church abroad has also stated that there are certain persons and organizations in our country who are not satisfied with the findings of the Commission.

I would of course like peace to reside so that the remains of the Tsar family might find their eternal resting place and that there wouldn't be any unrest in society and struggle about them. Moreover, that there be a symbolic grave and that this whole terrible, tragic story be finally put to rest.