Russian royalty’s letters return home

Saint Petersburg – A trove of documents detailing the private life of Russia’s Romanov family has returned home 100 years after the 1917 revolution.

The archive, containing letters, photos and drawings, was taken to Europe by members of the royal family who fled the chaos and persecutions of the revolution.

In July, the state-owned Russian bank, Sberbank, bought the archive for €70 000 (R1 111 430).

Now, as the country marks the centenary of the end of royal rule, the collection has gone on display at a museum in Tsarskoye Selo, former summer residence of the tsars on the outskirts of St Petersburg.

“These letters and telegrams reveal the everyday life of the imperial family, whose members truly loved each other,” said museum conservationist Irina Raspopova. “We were lucky to find them.”

The collection, which counts over 200 pieces dating from 1860 to 1928, features letters written by Tsar Nicholas II and his wife Alexandra Fyodorovna, his father Alexander III and other family members.

The documents, written in Russian, French and English on paper yellowed by time, show the pampered daily lives and leisure of the Russian royalty.

In a telegram to his daughter Ksenia from the year before he died in 1895, Alexander III grumbles about a relatively unsuccessful shooting expedition. “This is not going very well. But I have hunted and killed 11 pheasants,” he wrote. –