He described the murder of Nicholas II, along with his wife, their three children and four loyal personal servants by Bolsheviks, exactly 80 years ago, in the Ural Mountain city of Yekaterinburg, as ``one of the most shameful pages in Russian history.''

``Before the historic memory of the people, we are all responsible. Therefore, I couldn't help coming to the burial both as a human being and President,'' Yeltsin said, bowing his head to, what he called, ``the victims of the cruel execution.''

Their deaths, he said, were the results of violence in the society and the country was still living with its consequences. At the same time, Yeltsin warned that the schism that ended the lives of Romanovs and began the Communist era,could once again tear Russia apart. ``Any attempts to change our lives through violence are doomed to fail,'' Yeltsin said, repeating his veiled threat to those ``extremist forces'', which he said were plotting to seize power.

After the burial ceremony, attended by dozens of the surviving members of the Romanov dynasty from all around the world, the nine coffins were interred in the Peter and Paul Cathedral, the traditional resting place of the Russian Czars.

Throughout the ceremony, Yeltsin, who arrived in St Petersburg with wife Naina on Friday morning reversing at the eleventh hour an earlier decision to stay away looked serious and stern.

In 1977, Yeltsin, then Communist Party chief in the Sverdlovsk region, had ordered the demolition of the Ipatyev house in Yekaterinburg. The last Czar and his family were murdered there on July 17, 1918. Two decades ago, it was Yeltsin who first proposed laying the Romanovs to rest with their ancestors in St Petersburg.

The burial itself has caused deepdivision in Russian society. The Patriarch of the Orthodox Church, Alexy II, did not attend the ceremony because of doubts over the authenticity of the Czar's remains.