RUSSIAN GOVERNMENT DECIDES TO BURY IMPERIAL FAMILY IN ST. PETERSBURG.

After a session lasting three hours, the Russian government decided February 27 to bury the remains of Russia’s last tsar, Nikolai II, and his family in the Romanov family vault in the Peter and Paul Fortress in St. Petersburg. The ceremony will take place on July 17, eighty years after the imperial family were shot by a Bolshevik firing squad. The cabinet meeting was chaired by First Deputy Premier Boris Nemtsov. It was a sign of the controversial nature of the issue that President Boris Yeltsin — not normally renowned for indecision — declined to make the decision himself or even to take part in it. Nemtsov said the final decision was unanimous, but that the meeting was unprecedented in that every member of the cabinet was invited to express an opinion. (RTR, February 27)

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