Russian empress Maria Fyodorovna has been reburied in the St. Peter and Paul Cathedral in St. Petersburg. The coffin was buried in the Romanov family crypt. Thus the Empress mother of the last Russian Tsar, who fled Russia to escape the Bolshevik revoluti

Giving his comments on the reburial ceremony of the remains of Maria Fyodorovna, the professor of the World’s and the Russian history department at the High School of Economy, Igor Orlov said on Russia Today – the fact that the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church has been conducting the ceremonies is an unusual event:

“The presence of Russian politicians is not required at the ceremony of reburial of Maria Fydorovna, wife of Alexander III and mother of the last Russian emperor, Nicholas II. We can consider that the motives of the politicians’ decision were different. Somebody was motivated by the ideological rejection of the notion of monarchy, for example, the politicians of the left spectrum. The others simply didn’t want to show their pro-monarchial views, and somebody wanted not to turn the reburial into some kind of political show. The church, according to Russian traditions, has always been a political player and the presence of the Patriarch, a Russian figure of great magnitude, is proof of this. And the non-attendance of the president and the ministers can be explained by human, rather than political factors.”