The Home of the Last Tsar - Romanov and Russian History

Moscow, May 28 Interfax - Russia cannot move any further along the path of creative and peaceful development if those who ordered and carried out the execution of last Russian Tsar Nicholas II and his family are not named, a senior Russian Orthodox priest said.

"I am fully convinced that the evil act that took place in 1918 must be analyzed. Some time ago, an idea was expressed that a historical inquiry into those events was needed," deputy head of the Moscow Patriarchate Department for External Church Relations Archpriest Vsevolod Chaplin told a conference in Moscow.

"We cannot move any further along the path of creative and peaceful development without finding out who committed this evil act, who gave orders and who approved them," he said.

"One should also make a legal qualification and a political assessment of the killing of the Tsar and his family, a killing whose effects the state and society should compensated for by their actions," Chaplin said.

"There does exist veneration [of Nicholas II] among the people, and it is very, very deep," he said.