Notebook

No April Fools’

On April 1, a group called the Workers-Peasants Red Army, which was the official name of the Bolshevik and Soviet army until 1946, has claimed responsibility for planting a bomb that destroyed Moscow’s only monument to Russia’s last tsar, Nicholas II. The group called Nicholas the “bloody executioner of workers and peasants” and said the act was in ‘retaliation’ for proposals to move the preserved corpse of Vladimir Lenin out of its mausoleum on Red Square. The 11-meter high statue was erected last May near the Moscow suburb of Tayninskoye, to mark the 100th anniversary of Nicholas’ coronation.