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I suppose that someone could make a case that Vasiliy is similar to Vaseline, but it's really not that bad at all. I wouldn't make the association, and I'm all nit-picky about names. Miroslav is lovely. All "slav" names are lovely. In fact, Russian names are fabulous in general because they have pointy letters, which makes them splendid. Miroslav Alexei is uber handsome (I prefer Alexis, but that's no biggie, I still like Alexei), and the connection with the Tsarevich shouldn't be a problem at all. If somebody even DOES make the connection (which is unlikely, considering that most average people don't know the names of all the members of the Romanov family), it should be entirely insignificant. It's not like Alexei is necessarily a negative association. He didn't do anything bad; it's Rasputin that you have to avoid making the connection with.

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And as an answer to your question, I prefer Vlad as a nn for Vladimir. Sure, it does bring to mind Vlad the Impaler (er... not the best association), but it's just a nn. Volodya and Vovochka are fun in Russia, but people in the USA (and possibly Western Europe and Australia) aren't going to understand the concept of a nn being as long as or longer than the actual name. Even if you choose to use Vovochka as a nn, society in general will probably end up using Vlad just because it's typical in English-speaking countries.