The bones found in Yekaterinburg in 1991, reputed to be those of Tsar Nicholas II as well as some of his family and servants, are to be buried in St Petersburg in July, according to one of Russia's deputy prime ministers, Mr Boris Nemtsov.
Mr Nemtsov was accompanied by a representative of the Russian Orthodox Church, Metropolitan Juvenaly, when he made the announcement in Moscow but the decision appears to be far from final. It was significant that the proposed burial was not openly supported either by President Yeltsin or by Patriarch Alexiy II of Moscow and all the Russias.
Although identified by DNA tests as belonging to members of Romanov family, the "Yekaterinburg bones" have been the subject of controversy in Russia and among Russians abroad.
Emigre Russians believe that the true remains of the Imperial family, executed by Bolsheviks in Yekaterinburg in 1918, are cemented into the walls in the Russian Orthodox Church of St Job in Brussels, having been smuggled to western Europe by a pro-monarchy investigator, Mr Nikolai Sokolov.
Mr Peter Koltypin-Wollovskoy, president of the imigri (White) Russian commission on the remains, told The Irish Times that he did not dispute the DNA results which proved the Yekaterinburg bones to be those of members of the Romanov family but argued that, since so many Romanovs had been executed in the course of the Russian civil war, these were not necessarily the bones of the Tsar and his immediate family.
Yesterday, the full text of the decision on the bones by the Holy Synod of the Russian Orthodox Church expressed grave doubts on their authenticity.
The Synod, composed of Patriarch Alexiy and 12 bishops, recommended burial of the bones in an anonymous grave as "unknown victims of militant atheism."
Initially, it had been anticipated that Mr Yeltsin would be involved in a major ceremony in which the Yekaterinburg bones would be interred in St Petersburg and all victims of Soviet repression would be commemorated. In this way the Russian President - a former Communist Party boss of Yekaterinburg who ordered the destruction of the house in which the Romanovs were shot - would have the opportunity to wash his hands of one of the nastier events of his political past.
As the pro-monarchist forces began to exercise their influence, however, this opportunity quickly faded from the scene. Mr Yeltsin left Mr Nemtsov holding the baby.
Patriarch Alexiy, a close confidant of Mr Yeltsin, quickly put Metropolitan Juvenaly into a similar position.
Yesterday's government decision to bury the bones as those of the Imperial family runs contrary to the views of the Holy Synod and of the Russian Orthodox Church in Exile.
Mr Yeltsin and the Patriarch are likely to distance themselves further from the situation in the build-up to the burial.
