After nine decades, Russia royalty returning home

Before the communist revolution, there were 1.5 million members of the aristocracy here, according to The Assembly of Nobles, an association of Russian aristocrats.

But during the Bolshevik Revolution in 1917, many fled, including relatives of the murdered Tsar Nicholas II, who now live in the United States, Britain and elsewhere. Those who remained were killed in purges, or survived by playing down their aristocratic past.

The Government seized their property. Palaces were refitted as communal apartments and museums. Countryside estates were turned into sanitariums and children’s camps. But since the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Russia’s aristocrats have become more vocal — over 15,000 have joined The Assembly of Nobles, and are demanding the restitution of seized buildings.

“To steal property is immoral, and to return what was taken — it’s just,” said Alexander Korolyov-Pereleshin, vice-president of the organisation.

Members of the Romanov family living abroad have even suggested they could return home to rule Russia. However, aristocrats don’t enjoy much support from other Russians.

Restitution would mean vast swathes of central Moscow and St Petersburg would suddenly have new owners.

Mikhail Moskvin-Tarkhanov, head of the Moscow planning committee, says the nobility were to blame for losing their properties.

“Moral responsibility for the revolution lies with the governing classes as much as with the lower classes and revolutionaries. Because of their disgusting treatment of the lower classes, they carried the country to catastrophe,” he said.

“After so much blood, it’s a shame to even ask for the restitution of property,” said Prince Dimitri Romanov, 81, from Denmark.

Such disapproval hasn’t deterred Troitskaya-Mirkovich, the descendant of a commander who fought for Russia against Napoleon in 1812. She has been granted rent-free use of her Tula region estate for 49 years.

During Soviet times it was used as a children’s home, but it was abandoned after 1991 and began to fall apart. There’s no telephone, sanitary conditions are primitive, and Troitskaya-Mirkovich is slowly refitting it with period items. “When I return to Moscow, I don’t feel comfortable in my apartment,” Troitskaya-Mirkovich said. “On the first day I arrive at the estate, I feel at home.”

Another aristocrat found a simpler way to gain control of his family’s former property. Building materials magnate Sergei Leontyev, 44, whose ancestor was also a general in the Russian campaign against Napoleon, bought a crumbling summer estate in the Yaroslavl region in 2005 for $10,000.

After it was confiscated by the Bolsheviks it become a holiday camp for Pioneers, the Soviet Union’s Leninist equivalent of Boy Scouts, but following a restoration of the house and English-style garden it will become a hotel, as well as Leontyev’s home.