During a recent interview, the popular Russian journalist Yuri Vyazemsky[1], a member of the Patriarchal Council for Culture[2], recipient of numerous church and state awards[3], said that he would have personally shot the Holy Tsar-Martyr Nicholas II.

Vyazemsky, made the shocking statement during an interview on Умницы и умники [Smart Girls and Smart Guys], the television program which Vyazemsky has hosted since 1992.

“The Anointed of God was shot. But I would have shot him myself!” he raged. “Of course, I would not touch his family, but the Tsar deserved to be shot. He destroyed the Fatherland. He was a terrible ruler. He took over a prosperous country and was responsible for the terrible revolution, and a terrible war. Nicholas II made a lot of mistakes,” Vyazemsky vented during the program.

Archimandrite Raphael (Karelin), a hesychast[4], theologian, spiritual writer, reacted angrily to Vyazemsky’s words.

“These spiritual successors of the executioner [Yakov] Yurovsky[5] and those who turned monasteries into prisons and gulags, desecrated the altars of churches, made public toilets out of altars, now want to desecrate with their own dirt – the Tsar and his family,” Raphael wrote about Vyazemsky and his supporters. “They spit in the soul of the people, being confident in their impunity, and considered themselves the new masters of the land. They did not ask the people what they wanted and instead dictated their will and forced their evil plans upon them, and they ignored the indignation and protests . . .”

Vyazemsky’s comments have outraged many Orthodox Christians and monarchists, who are demanding that Vyazemsky’s membership in the Patriarchal Council for Culture be revoked, and that he be stripped of his numerous church and state awards.

NOTES:

[1] Yuri Pavlovich Vyazemsky, born 5th June 1951 in Leningrad, is a Soviet and Russian writer, philosopher, and TV presenter. Candidate of Historical Sciences, Professor, Head of the Department of World Literature and Culture of the Faculty of International Journalism of the Moscow State Institute of International Relations (MGIMO) of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the Russian Federation. Honored Worker of Culture of the Russian Federation. 

[2] The Patriarchal Council for Culture is one of the synodal institutions of the Moscow Patriarchate of the Russian Orthodox Church. Founded in March 2010, the tasks of the Council include dialogue and interaction with state cultural institutions, creative unions, public associations of citizens working in the field of culture, and other similar organizations in the countries of the canonical space of the Moscow Patriarchate.

[3] On 5th June 2021, Vyazemsky was awarded the Order of Alexander Nevsky, a prestigious State Award of the Russian Federation “for his great contribution to the development of the media and many years of fruitful activity“.

[4] a member of a movement dedicated to contemplation, originating among the Orthodox monks of Mount Athos in the 14th century.

[5] The regicide and chief executioner of the Imperial Family Yakov Mikhailovich Yurovsky (real name and patronymic Yankel Khaimovich, 1878-1938).

© Paul Gilbert. 17 April 2025