the Kremlin is keen to promote. A presidential commission asked Putin in 2003 to grant the request of one of Nicholas II's last surviving relatives to rehabilitate the House of Romanov. Willing to regain the imperial grandeur of Russia, Putin invited the Romanov imperial family to return to Russia in July 2015. According to the presidential commission, this move would represent a significant final step in Russia's journey to embrace its imperial history. An alliance has been forged between the Church and the Kremlin since Putin became President of the Russian Federation. An adherent of the Russian Orthodox Church, Putin has allowed the regaining by the Orthodox Church of much of the importance that the Church had enjoyed in the Russian Empire and has won the enthusiastic support of its religious leaders. American historian Stanley G. Payne argued that Putin's political system is "more a revival of the creed of Tsar Nicholas I in the 19th century that emphasized 'Orthodoxy, autocracy, and nationality' than one resembling the revolutionary, modernizing regimes of Hitler and Mussolini." Rehabilitation of the Soviet Union Some commentators have said that current Putin holds many neo-Soviet views, especially concerning law and order and military strategic defense. The first politically controversial step made by Putin, then the FSB Director, was restoring in June 1999 a memorial plaque to Yuri Andropov on the facade of the building, where the KGB had been headquartered. In late 2000, Putin submitted a bill to the State Duma to use the Soviet anthem as Russia's national anthem. The Duma voted in favor. The music remained identical, but new lyrics were written. In September 2003, Putin was quoted as saying: "The Soviet Union is a very complicated page in the history of our peoples. It was heroic and constructive, and it was also tragic. But it is a page that has been turned. It's over, the boat has sailed. Now we need to think about the present and the future of our peoples". In February 2004, Putin said: "It is my deep conviction that the dissolution of the Soviet Union was a national tragedy on a massive scale. I think the ordinary citizens of the former Soviet Union and the citizens in the post-Soviet space, the CIS countries, have gained nothing from it. On the contrary, people have been faced with a host of problems." He went on to say, "Incidentally, at that period,