There are many who believe that a thorough historical reckoning is an essential step in the consolidation of a nation, and that modern governments need to put their own pasts on trial in order to achieve reconciliation – be it the United States, Germany, Japan, or Russia. Although they haven’t yet buried Lenin, released political prisoners, or attempted to unravel the human rights abuses of the Soviet Union, Russia’s rehabilitation of the Romanovs is an interesting and brave step in the right direction. This op/ed from the IHT rather aggressively states that the court’s ruling on Czar Nicholas proves that Lenin was just “a murderous thug.”

Anyone who rejects linear theories of history in favor of cycles had to feel vindicated last week after Russia’s Supreme Court rehabilitated Czar Nicholas II and his family, declaring that they were victims of “groundless” repression when they were murdered, at Lenin’s behest, in 1918. During the Soviet interregnum, schoolchildren were taught that the last czar was a criminal. The notion that he and the other Romanovs could one day be officially deemed victims of the Bolshevik terror – well, for 90 years the kindest thing to be said about such a notion was that it was delusional.