MOSCOW, Oct. 17 -- Queen Elizabeth II arrived in Moscow Monday for a four-day visit that marks the first trip ever to Russia by a reigning British monarch. The queen was taken directly from the airport in her royal Rolls Royce to the Kremlin, where she and her husband Prince Philip, the duke of Edinburgh, are staying. President Boris Yeltsin and his wife Naina welcomed the royal couple in St. George's Hall, the largest chamber in the Great Kremlin Palace, to the playing of both national anthems in a ceremony broadcast live on nationwide television. The queen's bright yellow suit stood out among the mostly dark-suited Russian government officials and their wives. Yeltsin presented the queen with a bouquet of yellow roses. To cap the queen's first night in Moscow, the Yeltsins reserved the best seats in the house before one of the world's great stages -- the Czar's Box at the Bolshoi Theater -- for Monday's performance of 'Giselle' to start off the busy schedule of events for the queen and Prince Philip. The two days in Moscow, followed by two days in St. Petersburg, will be marked by a series of entertainments and visits to historic sites -- Red Square, the famous onion-domed St. Basil's Cathedral, the Tretyakov Gallery, old churches, and palatial czarist quarters in the former capital St. Petersburg. The queen will meet Russian Orthodox Patriarch Alexei II, visit a Russian school that specializes in English, lay the first stone for a new British Embassy and visit an Anglican Church taken away after the Bolshevik Revolution and returned by Russia, to the dismay of some nationalists.
Although the royal visit to Russia is dinstinctly non-political, there was a sense that it would further cement ties between the two countries, though the welcoming ceremony was marked by last-minute changes in the Russian government lineup. Buckingham Palace officials said at the outset that the visit, said to be one of the most important foreign trips of the queen's reign, would improve ties between the two countries. Kremlin international affairs adviser Dmitry Rurikov said the visit was 'recognition that Russia is on the way to democracy and reforms.' Relations were strained by seven decades of communism that began with the killing of Russia's last czar and his family, to which Britain's royals were related. Rurikov said the queen's visit signaled a 'prestigous recognition that Russia is a democratic state which ensures and respects human rights and fredoms.' The queen landed at the VIP section of Moscow's Vnukovo airport, met not by Yeltsin, nor by Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin and Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev who had been slated to greet her, but rather by First Deputy Prime Minister Oleg Soskovets. It was Soskovets who stood in for Yeltsin when the Russian president mysteriously failed to leave his plane during a Sept. 30 stop in Ireland for a scheduled meeting with Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds. Chernomyrdin, listed in official British protocol as the one who would greet the queen, remained on holiday in the Russian Black Sea resort of Sochi; Kozyrev, also slated to welcome the queen, was in New York for U.N. meetings on Iraq, making him unavailable to meet with British Foreign Secretary Douglas Hurd, who accompanied the queen. Kozyrev was said to be upset with Hurd for rejecting Russia's initiatives to resolve the latest Iraqi-Kuwaiti crisis, according to an unnamed diplomat with Kozyrev cited by the Interfax news agency. Kozyrev was to return to Moscow after the queen and Hurd had left. While the makeup of the airport greeting and Kozyrev's absence injected a hint of political controversy at the start of the visit, the queen may have been happy to leave even more controversy behind her at home. The trip began against a background of sensations raging in Britain over the cooperation of Prince Charles with a biography revealing intimate details of royal family life and his marriage to Princess Diana. The authorized biography of the prince of Wales by journalist Jonathan Dimbleby, excerpts of which were published by The Sunday Times, reveals the heir to the throne felt pressured by his father, Prince Philip, into marrying Diana even though he did not love her, that he was bullied at school and lacked affection at home. British newspapers castigated Charles for cooperating with the biography and giving the author unprecedented access to letters and diaries, and the reports said the queen and aides at Buckingham Palace were furious at her son. Prince Philip appeared to back those reports by telling The Daily Telegraph, during an interview about the trip to Russia, that he and the queen would never discuss personal matters in public, indicating disapproval of his son's revelations. With some in Russia calling for the restoration of the czars, Prince Philip defended the place of monarchy in society but said it had succeeded in Britain because it was 'outside and beyond political involvement' while the czar 'was, by constitution, the autocrat.' 'There may be a lot of things that we've done wrong, but there's never been any corruption scandals,' he told the Telegraph. 'Whichever way we've done it, everything that's been done has been done for the benefit of the country. It's not for our benefit.' He said he was unsure if people in Eastern Europe would want to return to monarchies, despite the presence of monarchist parties. 'Do the pretenders actually want to go back? Because I don't think it's an unmitigated pleasure,' Prince Philip said, perhaps reflecting the problems that have affected his family recently. He held out little hope for small countries that have made royal overtures to the House of Windsor, such as the former Soviet republic of Estonia where a monarchist group invited Prince Edward, the youngest son of Elizabeth and Philip, to consider the throne. 'I don't think there would be many volunteers from this family,' Philip said. A Russian royalist party used the occasion of the queen's visit to announce that it had collected 800,000 signatures supporting a referendum on whether Russia should establish a constitutional monarchy and restore the czar. ( Jeff Berliner in Moscow and Michael Collins in London)
