RUSSIA: Russia's last tsar may soon be recognised as a victim of political repression at the hands of the Bolsheviks, as the country continues to revise its revolutionary past.
A Moscow court has overturned an earlier ruling, raising hopes for royalists that the killing of the Romanov family will be recognised as politically motivated murder.
Until this week's victory, Russian courts refused to acknowledge that the deaths had a political dimension, insisting they be classified as common murder.
Less than a year after communists seized power in 1917, Tsar Nicholas II and his family were shot by a firing squad after being detained in the Ural city of Yekaterinburg.
Now recognised as a saint by the Russian Orthodox Church, Nicholas II was reinterred in the former capital of St Petersburg in 1998. But the legal debate continued over the reasons for his killing - was it a state-sponsored murder or not?
The current head of the imperial household in exile, Grand Duchess Maria Romanova, who lives in Spain, hopes to conclude the process of "political rehabilitation" for her ancestor. She wants him cleared posthumously of any allegations levelled against him by the Bolsheviks.
According to the latest court ruling, Russian prosecutors accept there may be indirect evidence that the order to kill the tsar was carried out under political orders. The precise circumstances of the killing have been shrouded in mystery.
But the final outcome will take at least another round of court appearances.
The move to rehabilitate Nicholas II appears to be another signal of Russia making peace with its turbulent history.
Just over a month ago, the tsar's mother, the last Empress Maria Feodorovna, was reinterred in St Petersburg, fulfilling her dying wish.
Although she outlived her son by 10 years, she had to wait almost eight decades to be laid to rest again on Russian soil after dying in her native Denmark.
Since the collapse of the Soviet Union, the former imperial flag has been restored. But Soviet symbols such as the hammer and sickle or statues of Lenin are still commonplace in Russia.