100 years ago, this week,
Russia's imperial family, the Romanovs,
were murdered by the Bolsheviks,
the country's Marxist revolutionaries.
Today, Russia has a leader who many believe
is positioning himself as a new kind of tsar.
Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin.
Russia's president has adopted
some of the trappings of an imperial ruler.
But he also admires the country's Soviet past,
so this anniversary is a tricky moment for the president.
July 1918, a civil war raged across Russia's vast lands
between Bolshevik forces, led by Lenin and the White Army,
loyal to Tsar Nicholas II.
The Bolsheviks had seized power eight months previously,
established a socialist workers republic
and soon after had imprisoned Nicholas and his family
in the city of Ekaterinburg.
Then on the night of July 16th,
the Bolsheviks did the unthinkable.
Nicholas, his wife Alexandra,
their five children and servants,
were dumped in unmarked graves.
The news would send shock waves around the world.
Today, Russia is ruled by a modern day autocrat,
Vladimir Putin.
Real power rests with Mr. Putin,
while the duma, Russia's parliament, like Nicholas's
parliament in the early 1900s, wields little real authority.
And like Russia's tsars, Mr. Putin has tried to maintain
his grip on power through political repression at home
and military conflict abroad in both Ukraine and Syria.
The Romanov tsars were closely supported
by the Russian Orthodox church.
Mr. Putin has worked to gain their support too.
But the centenary of the Romanov murders
poses a challenge for Mr. Putin.
Russia's president has tried to sidestep
the barbarity of the Romanov murders to present
a revisionist version of modern Russian history.
Mr. Putin isn't the first president
to grapple with the legacy of the Romanovs.
In 1998, the remains of Tsar Nicholas
and his family were identified.
Then President Boris Yeltsin used the Tsar's reburial
to acknowledge that the murders were a crime
and to break away from Russia's soviet past.
In Mr. Putin, the Church's hierarchy
has found an ally who celebrates Russia's imperial past.
While the 65 year old president has used the Church's
support to bolster his image as Russia's anointed savior.
Mr. Putin remains popular in part because he has muzzled
any real political opposition,
like the tsars he resists calls for democratic reform.
The Russian president's grip on power
remains strong, but as Russian history has shown,
the country's systems of government can rise and fall
in unpredictable ways.