THE BOOK FAIR

Review:

The biography of Nicholas 11, the last Tsar of Russia, and his wife, the disliked German Princess, Tsarina Alexandra, always considered the foreigner, and their five children, the last of the Russian Romanov’s in Imperial Russia.  Robert Massie details the lives of the Romanov’s and the historical time in which they lived.  Massie’s book portrays Nicholas as a loving husband and doting father, as well as the Tsar of Russian.

 

Although Nicholas was groomed and educated to be the next Tsar of Russia, he was not ready to assume the responsibility when his father, Alexander 111 (Alexander Alexandrovich Romanov) died in November 1894. 

After the Princess Alix of Hesse, converted to the Russian Orthodox faith, and took the name Alexandra Fedorovna, Nicholas and Alexandra were married in November 1894, a week after his father’s funeral.  Nicholas and Alexandria were Coroneted in 1896.

 

Nicholas was referred to as Nicholas the Bloody, first for the Khodynka tragedy at his Coronation when 1400 people were trampled to death due to the loss of crowd control; for his squashing the rebellion of 1905 in which 14,000 people were killed and 75,000 people were imprisoned which led to the Constitution of 1906; for Bloody Sunday when a peaceful march on the Winter Palace for worker’s rights led to violence and government forces killed 1,000 protestors; for allowing anti-Semitic uprisings and pogroms, anti-Semitism endemic in Russian society; and for the Tsar’s execution of political opponents.

 

The war with Japan, in 1904 turned disastrous for Russia and Nicholas paid the price which cost him politically.  Russians were reluctant to go to war with the Japanese but were encouraged by Nicholas, his rhetoric of Russian superiority and promise of victory.  Russia had long held imperial designs on Manchuria and Korea.  The Japanese offered compromise, allowing Russia dominance in Manchuria for Japanese dominance in Korea.  Nicholas refused thus dragging Russia into a conflict incurring heavy losses, both militarily and financially.

 

Social upheaval forced the Tsar into signing the Constitution of 1906, and the passing of the State Duma but with Nicholas’s maneuvering he managed to retain most of his power.  Another thorn in the Tsar’s and Tsarina’s unpopularity was the mistrusted relationship between Gregory Rasputin and the Empress Alexandra.

 

Rasputin, Gregory Efimovich, was born in Western Siberia in 1872 to farmers.  As a child, Gregory began a modest reputation as a seer when he pronounced a thief.  In 1903, he was welcomed to St. Petersburg declared a “Siberian moujik”, one with extraordinary powers, and was blessed by the most favored priest in Russia, John of Krondstadt.  Rasputin was introduced to the Tsar by the Grand Duchess Militsa in 1905; Rasputin visited the palace in 1907, visited the Romanov children making a connection in particular to Alexis, noted by his sister.  Alexandra made the fateful analogy that Rasputin was brought to her to save her son.

 

Alexandria sought comfort and counsel from Rasputin, especially in relation to Alexis their youngest child and only son who suffered from hemophilia.  Alexandra’s focus in life became her son and his illness and in the midst of her sorrow, towed the along Tsar with her.  The Tsar relied on his wife; Alexandra relied on Rasputin.  The Romanov’s, in their all consuming royalty did not comprehend the depth of dislike their countrymen held for Rasputin, and for them.

 

The first attempt on Rasputin’s life occurred the same week of the assassination of the Hapsburg Prince that started WW1, in 1914.  The second attempt on Rasputin’s life ended in his murder, by poisoning and shooting.  Yussoupov, a political opponent lured Rasputin to his death, December 16, 1916.  It is said that Rasputin believed the Tsar should abdicate, name Alexis as Tsar with Alexandra as Regent.

 

The Tsar Nicholas 11 was forced to abdicate the throne following the February Revolution of 1917.  Imprisoned at the Alexander Palace in Tsarskoye Selo, the family at the time still hoped to leave Russia believing they would be relocated to England.  This had been promised to Nicholas by the Provisional Government.  The fate of the Romanov’s laid in the balance of power in Russia, the Provisional Government, now their protector, and the Soviets, demanding their demise.

 

Kerensky, of the Provisional Government on first order abolished the death penalty, in effort to establish that the Revolution would not tolerate vengeance.  England began to withdraw support for accepting the fallen Tsar and his family.  Weeks passed into months and by April, asylum was still not granted.

 

Lenin returned to Russia in April 1917.  Kerensky, determined to keep the deposed Tsar and his family safe successfully kept the secret of Romanov’s move to Tobolsk in August of 1917.  For the next eight months, the family would reside in the governor’s mansion.  The Russian Revolution thundered on, White Russians, the Provisional Government against Reds Russians, the Communists.

 

Nicholas followed the events; he blamed Kerensky for his army’s failure to squash the Red’s, but did not understand the power and strength of Lenin and Trotsky.  Housing the Imperial family became troublesome as funds ran low, and worse when the funds contributed to feed the family were stolen.

The Kerensky Government fell swiftly; Lenin consolidated power, signed a peace treaty with the Germans ending the war and Russia’s expanse of territory with it, losing more than one third of its empire.

The Romanovs were relocated to Ekaterinburg.  Now under Red control, the Romanov’s were truly prisoners.  The Red guards holding the Imperial family resented them and were crude, rude, drunkards and not beyond stealing their belongings.

 

The White Army made up of Czechs, organized by Kerensky, fought the Reds on the way to save the Romanov’s, and were only days away.  The Bolshevik’s had no time for the show trial they planned so made the choice to murder the family.

On July 16, Yurovsky was given the order; a professional and unemotional soldier, unlike the previous guards, he carried out the order.  In the early morning hours of July 17, 1917, one by one, Nicholas, Alexandra, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Alexis were shot.  The maid was shot then bayoneted, their Spaniel was bashed, killed by a rifle butt.

 

For three days, Yurovsky’s men labored to mutilate and finally burn the bodies that were then thrown into a mine shaft fourteen miles from Ekaterinburg.

 

On the 18, a telegram was sent to the Presidium Executive Council stating the murders had taken place; on July 20, 1917, the Council approved the action that the ex-Tsar Nicholas had been shot and announced the death of Nicholas to the public.

 

A week later, the Whites entered the city and found the entire family missing, but little evidence to their disappearance.  The Bolsheviks denied responsibility for the murders.  In January of 1919, Nicholas Sokolov investigated the murders and located the mine and the remains of the bodies, with their identifying jewelry, and Spaniel.

 

A year later, the Bolsheviks were forced to admit the Romanovs’ were dead but blamed and executed twenty-eight revolutionaries for the crimes.

Lenin died in 1924 from a series of strokes; Trotsky accused Stalin of poisoning Lenin.  Stalin, after exiling Trotsky in 1927, had Trotsky murdered in 1940 in Mexico.  Stalin ruled Russia with an iron fist killing tens of thousands of his own countrymen, and imprisoned more over the decades.

 

Anastasia, the youngest sister of Olga, Tatiana and Maria, all Grand Duchesses was the Romanov daughter of fictional Hollywood films claiming her mysterious survival.  She was killed with her siblings on July 17, 1918.

Robert Massie ‘s son was born with hemophilia which originally engaged his interest in the Tsar’s family; the biography  followed.