The Opium of the People
A group of men was transporting the bodies through Soviet Yekaterinburg. These corpses had once been the sacred imperial family, revered by the empire’s subjects while they still drew breath.
The man watching those soon-to-be-burned remains smiled bitterly.
“How truly fleeting.”
“Comrade Yakov. What do you mean by that?”
“Just look at them. The royal house that was supposed to enjoy the Lord’s protection has been cut down by our bullets instead.”
The last Tsar of the Russian Empire—Nicholas II—the Empress, and their children. The God meant to shield them was nowhere in sight. The entire imperial family had been dispatched by Bolshevik bullets and now lay as cold corpses, fated to rot with the passage of time.
“So it seems.”
“In the end they were only human, just like us. Yet they spent their lives wallowing in every luxury and privilege royalty could offer.”
Yakov Yurovsky, the man who had directed the Ural Soviet’s execution of the family, sneered as though his fury still festered.
“You have a point, Comrade. If they truly basked in God’s favor, shouldn’t they have risen from this very spot?”
“Heh heh heh. If they did come back they’d kill us first, but this little spectacle has once again proven that religion is the opium of the people.”
If the Lord truly existed, would He have permitted the imperial family of the Russian Orthodox Church to be slaughtered? In the end that God was a hollow delusion, and His religion nothing more than a lie—the opium of the masses.
Yakov’s lips curled with sardonic contempt.
Well, at least they were finished. That was something.
“Once the cleanup is done, soothe the comrades who are whining that they didn’t get to rape the princesses. We can’t afford to tarnish the Party’s image.”
If the girls had still been breathing, those degenerates with wandering hands would have left them in a far worse state.
With that thought he turned away, eager for this tiresome business to end.
All that remained was to strip the bodies, burn them, and bury the ashes wherever convenient.
The reason for their haste was simple. They had killed the imperial family, but counter-revolutionary forces were already marching on Yekaterinburg to seize them. The dead were useless now, yet it was as obvious as the corpses before him that the city would soon fall to the reactionaries. Nothing would be left but mutilated remains whose shapes could no longer be recognized.
Then the Cheka agents handling the bodies began to scream.
“What is it?”
Had someone actually survived? Impossible. The princess who had once lived through a previous attempt thanks to jewels hidden in her clothing had certainly been bayoneted to death.
Yet—
“Th-the princess! The princess is alive!”
That impossible thing had actually happened.