Customer Reviews

Alexandra: The Last Tsarina

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(13)
3 star:		(10)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(6)

 

 

First of all, this is the first book I have read that was written by Carolly Erickson, who was supposed to be a very good author. On this book however, I do not think she covered any new ground at all. Firstly, there are a lot of first hand sources ( biographies written by the Romanov and Greek familes that are not consulted and not included in the biography). There was also scant mention about Alexandra's relationship with her sisters Victoria and Irene. There are actually some letters still stored in archievs that could provide more information on this much written about woman, but they are not there. Even Ella, Alexandra's sister was not given enough page space even though she was very involved in her sister's life (they frequently travel to monestaies around Russia for pilgramages even after Ella became a nun). Another victim was the Dowager Empress Marie Feodorovna, who was described almost as a "mother-in-law from hell", and forever critizing her poor daughter-in-law. The truth is that Marie was quite a bossy, but also fair-minded, woman, and if it wasn't for Alexandra's intense shyness and sensitive nature, could have been a great ally to her daughter-in-law. Excellent biographies on the Dowager Empress like Coryne Hall's Little Mother of Russia, E E P Tisadll's "Dowager Empress" and most importantly Edward Bing's (ed) "The Secret Letters of The Tsar to Dowager Empress Marie" were not consulted. Without going through papers in Windsor, Broadlands and Russian Archievs, there will NOT be any surprises here. Most of the ground covered were already in Robert Massie's " Nicholas And Alexandra". The photos were also seen before in most books too. So to those like me already spent a fortune on collecting books on the Romanovs, it will not worth the effort to do so, but to those who want to start on it. It may be nice read in the park.

I opened this book with anticipation: I have been in love with imperial Russia since childhood. I have read at least 50 books on the Romanov's Russia, and lectured on "Romanov psychology", but I found this work a bore. Ms. Erickson revealed nothing new and cited (mostly) secondary and tertiary sources. I felt as though I was reading a Danielle Steele novel at times (with apologies to Ms. Steele...I wish I had one-one hundredth of her success as a writer!) H.I.M. the Tsarina was cast with Scarlett O'Hara-type melodrama, while every serious reader knows Alexandra was far more complex than most fictional heroines. I recommend Greg King's The Last Empress (far from perfect, but, in my view, better researched and written) or Robert Massie's legendary Nicholas and Alexandra. I'm sorry Ms. Erickson, I LOVE your Tudor series, but you really dropped the ball on this one.

I truly disliked this biography, I thought it was poorly written & researched; melodramatic, and frankly, dull, given its subject matter. I struggled to finish it.

Better books for insight into Alexandra are: "Purple Secret" by John Rohl, et al. for its chapter on Alexandra's complex medical history; Robert Massie's "Nicholas & Alexandra" for its sympathetic understanding of Alix's traumatic childhood loss of her mother, and what it's like to be the parent of a hemophiliac (this despite Massie's inaccuracies, such as stating that Queen Victoria was strongly in favor of the marriage of Nicky & Alix and that she tried to talk Alix into it, when in fact she dreaded it), and, oddly enough, a biography of Alix's mother: "Princess Alice" by Gerard Noel, which gives excellent insight into Alix's parents and German background. Also, "Advice to My Granddaughter" a collection of letters between Queen Victoria and Alix's oldest sister, Princess Victoria of Battenberg. There is also: "A Lifelong Passion", a collection of letters between & diaries of Nicholas & Alexandra, and the relatives around them. Any one of these has more value than Erickson's book. I have not read Greg King's biography of Alexandra (to date) so cannot comment on it.

I've enjoyed Erickson's Tudor biographies, so I'm trying to be fair, but this biography didn't cut it. It was a great disappointment.

I have a great deal of respect for Carolly Erickson as a first-rate biographer, but this is definitely among her lesser efforts. Often melodramatic and cloying, it reads more like a novel than a biography. The last Tsarina did lead a somewhat tragic life and there's nothing wrong with a biography that reflects as much, but Erickson is capable of a much better-rounded assessment than she presents here.

The basic facts of Alexandra's well-heeled, but often sad life are well presented, from her childhood in Germany to the demise of her family in the midst of the Russian Revolution. The book's real downfall is that Erickson is so intent on inspiring sympathy for her subject, the portrait she creates is both one-dimensional and unnecessarily depressing. Chapter after chapter of accounts of how the elite of St. Petersburg looked down their noses at "The German B___" and her failure to conceive a son drives home the point that, like most women of her time and class, Alexandra was valued for little more than carrying on the family bloodline. This is a valid and important point, but there is more to the story of those years, and most of it isn't touched on at all here. Additionally, Erickson inadvertently perpetuates the sexism she sets out to denounce, concentrating so much on Alexandra's hemophiliac son and her relationship with him that we learn almost nothing about her four daughters except for their names.

Along the way, there are hints of her relationship with Russia as a whole before and during the revolution, but most of the time Erickson doesn't do nearly enough to illustrate the events of the period with respect to Alexandra. This occasionally leads to confusion: after reading throughout most of the book that she was loathed in St. Petersburg even in good times, we are told that she and her family were welcomed warmly by the rural villagers into whose midst they were exiled during the revolution. While this is not necessarily inconsistent, Erickson's near complete lack of attention to greater Russia throughout most of the book makes it a confusing and somewhat unconvincing point - one of many such points found in the later portion of the story.

And an entertaining story it is, wonderfully readable and entertaining like most of Erickson's works are. But as a serious biographical study, especially of a figure whose life is already very well documented, it falls short.

I'm a sucker for anything remotely connected to the Romanovs. I'm read Massie's NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA; Salisbury's BLACK NIGHT, WHITE SNOW; Massie's THE ROMANOVS, THE FINAL CHAPTER; MICHAEL AND NASTASHA (about Nicholas's brother, who was also murdered); I've even read ANNA ANDERSON (I was totally sold until the DNA results proved her a fraud) and the specious THE ESCAPE OF ALEXEI.
As a result, there wasn't much new about Erickson's ALEXANDRA. I didn't know, however, that she was almost twenty-two and worried about becoming a spinster before she married Nicholas. Erickson portrays Alexandra as a shy, yet willful and intelligent woman. But there isn't much evidence to prove the latter. Alexandra interfered in government, putting pressure on Nicholas to assume command of the Russian armies during WWI and to appoint Rasputin's friend, Boris Sturmer, as a minister in the government. She also had him take Rasputin's comb along as a talisman. Alexandra shows symptoms of a borderline manic-depressive, alternating periods where she took to bed with migraine headaches with days working herself ragged at military hospitals.
Many of the dramatic turns of the last tsar's reign are glossed over: Bloody Sunday, Rasputin's assassination, the stampede during Nicholas's coronation, even the murder scene in Ekaterinburg. There is some new material concerning Rasputin's son-in-law, Boris Soloviev, who tried to help the Romanovs escape before being arrested. We also learn that Alexandra managed to smuggle numerous messages past the Bolshevik guards, one of which found its way to the Cheka.
A major disappointment was the dearth of pictures, only eight pages. The daughters also receive scant attention.
I found the footnotes and the bibliography beneficial. We find out what happened to Boris Soloviev and others. Some of the titles seem intriguing, Bykov's THE LAST DAYS OF TSARDOM, and especially Rasputin's murderer Prince Felix Yusupov's LOST SPLENDER.

Carolly Erickson has turned out another in her series of well written, engaging, biographies. Alexandra: the Last Tsarina draws upon much of the same material on which other Romanov biographers such as Robert K. Massie have relied. Therefore if you are a long time student of Nicholas and Alexandra and their times you won't find a lot of new material here. What new material there is, and the interpretations Erickson makes of the more familiar information, is quite interesting. Erickson shows Alexandra to have been an intelligent, complex woman who enjoyed reading philosophy, who had a sometimes cruel sense of humor (she drew nasty caricatures of her husband and members of the court), and who could be decisive and determined when her husband was passive and fatalistic. Alexandra's maternal qualities are also emphasized, including her insistence on breast feeding her children and on personally nursing them through their illnesses. Other biographers have discussed this last point, but usually only in connection with her son's hemophilia. Now we know that the Empress also sat up all night with her daughters. Erickson does a good job of describing Alexandra's own ailments, including several miscarriages (which have never been discussed by other biographers), a false pregnancy, and what appears to have been an extended depression.

I would give this book five stars, but I am troubled by some of Erickson's sources and her lack of documentation. She seems to have relied on the memoirs of one maid for most of her information on Alexandra's early married years and ignored (or at least not cited) much of the other material used by other authors which deal with that period. Furthermore, Erickson states that Alexis had a hernia operation in 1912, with her source apparently being the highly doubtful memoirs of Rasputin's daughter. I'm no doctor, but I wonder how anyone would dare operate on any hemophiliac in 1912, let alone the only son of the Tsar. I've read quite a few Romanov books and I've never heard of such an operation before. It also bothers me that very little attention is paid to Alexandra's deep religious beliefs, which caused her to believe in Rasputin's healing powers to the very end.

Even though I have these concerns, I still enjoyed Alexandra: The Last Tsarina very much, especially Erickson's insights into the Empress's inner emotions and the way she misunderstood and was misunderstood by Russian society.

Carolly Erickson may or may not be a great biographer, however this is not a great biography. At the conclusion of this book, I did not feel that I had come to know Alexandra any better that I had some 330 pages earlier.

Alexandra was born Princess Alix of Hesse just as that little country was in the process of being subsumed into the untied Germany that we have come to know today. At and early age the entire family was sickened with diphtheria and Alix's sister and mother both died. Changing her bright nature (she was nicknamed `Sunny') into a darker more introspective one

Through her famous grandmother (Victoria of England), she was related to all the right people. Due to her famous beauty (only her sister was thought to surpass her among the eligible royalty of her day), she was assured of a marriage to bring happiness and fortune.

She defied her family and turned down the future King of England to marry the heir to Russian throne. Theirs was truly a match of love that was able to endure. And it certainly had a lot to endure. Tragedy seemed to stalk the young woman. The wedding plans so carefully begun were cast aside as her future father-in-law Tsar Alexander III died unexpectedly leaving her fiancée unprepared and untutored for the immense responsibilities as leader of all the Russias. She came to the country behind the Alexander's coffin and was never able to learn about the land or the people as one of them. Instead she became the social leader of country in which she was unable to speak the language and in which she did not know the customs. Princess Alix (now Empress Alexandra), was never able to find a place within Russian society.

The empress was unable for years to produce the son so vitally needed for the succession. When she finally gave birth to Alexei , he was so discovered to be a victim of hemophilia and unlikely to survive into adulthood. Knowing that this latest curse had come from her genes, drove Alexandra into a frenzy to find a cure or at least salvation for this most important son

Always strong in belief, she turned increasing to the fringes of the Orthodox religion, finding at last the man she called `our friend'. Rasputin was a man well known among the Russian upper classes. He was a drunk who gambled extensively, who slept with any woman he could find , and who boasted about his exploits among the upper-classes. Alexandra could see only his simple faith and the way in which he alone could ease the pain of her crippled son. Her increasing reliance on this man helped to alienate her and her husband even more from the ruling classes of the nation.

In time the wide gulf between the rich and poor would become too wide a gap. There was no longer any hope by the peasant classes in their `little father' and `little mother'. WWI and the horrific death toll was the final straw on the overburdened populace. The Tsar was deposed and he and his whole family were imprisoned and eventually executed.

Too much of this book reads like a novel . The author often presumes to tell us how the characters felt about a situation without bothering to back it up. There is far too much use of phrases like `she must have felt' in this book.

Too little of it is well documented in the text or footnotes. All too often there would some interesting bit of knowledge that I had not known before and when I went to look up the source there was not a word in the notes. This makes it very frustrating for me to judge the sources based on my prior reading. However I doubt if a casual reader would find this much of a detriment.

Erickson has also presented a view of the Empress that I have not often seen in other books. Most books seem to have felt that Alexandra was shy in public but warmheartd in person. That the country's view of her as selfish and capricous shows how much they misunderstood her true intentions. Carolly Erickson seems to take the view that the Empress was in fact selfsh and capricous , although she was a devoted mother to her son and wife to her husband. She is viewed as neglecting her daughters, as a `parvenue' and a spiteful woman. Perhaps. But I think that I will wait for a more detailed, more researched book before I make my conclusions.

Carolly Erickson's biography of Alexandra, the last tsarina of Russia, is highly readable, but it relies on too few questionable sources and errs on the side of being too sympathetic to its subject. Erickson excels at depicting the atmosphere in Petrograd during the early reign of Nicholas II leading up to the revolution. She capture the hardships suffered by the general populace and contrasts it nicely with the extravagance of the Russian nobility. Her narrative flows nicely and brings the core characters to life. Despite Erickson's skill as a writer, however, this biography is ultimately flawed.

Few biographers are unable to resist the temptation to portray Alexandra as a martyr who heroically nursed her hemophiliac son and was tragically murdered. While Erickson acknowledges that Alexandra adamantly refused sound advice that contradicted her own beliefs, dominated her weak-willed husband and in the face of all reason insisted upon associating with popularly despised and discredited religious mystics, Erickson nevertheless attempts to portray her as a misunderstood victim of circumstances. For example, she acknowledges Alexandra's complete failure to be accepted by the Russian court, but she lays the blame solely at the feet of their callous lack of sympathy for Alexandra's paralyzing shyness. Surprisingly, this shyness was never remarked upon during Alexandra's early life in Germany and England. Erickson never considers that Alexandra, raised in rigid Victorian formality, disapproved of the much less restrained Russian court and made her feelings all too clear. Erickson also seems to bend over backwards to justify Alexandra's continued reliance upon Rasputin, but there can be no excuse for her insistence upon maintaining the relationship despite the clear damage it was causing to the reputation of the monarchy. Given the extreme political upheaval in Russia at the time, it is unlikely that anyone in Alexandra's position would have been able to avert the eventual crisis, but there is no doubt that her behaviour contributed to the downfall of the monarchy. This biography, unfortunately, tends to excuse her behaviour rather than analyze it critically.

In the macabre story of the ill-fated Romanov dynasty, the tragic figure of the Empress Alexandra - Alix of Hesse - has always played a most fascinating part. While sometimes a bit melodramatic, veteran biographer Erickson has brought to life an intriguing glimpse into the life Russia's last tsarina.

Although Erickson obviously feels sympathy for the empress, she makes no bones about portraying Alix as she was - an aloof, dominant, manic-depressive woman with deep fears. Deeply religious - and deeply superstitious - the sensitive German was vilified by the Russian people, who blamed her (with some justification) for the mistakes of her bumbling husband's regime.

The deep love affair between Alix and her husband, Nicholas II, is sketched poignantly in the early chapters, claiming that they fell in love while yet children. Their marriage was opposed on many fronts, by both families, and at one point, Alix firmly believed that she was destined to be an old maid. And, indeed, it would have better for her if she had.

From the onset, despite the unfailing love that permeated her marriage with "Nicky," Alix struggled to fit into her role as queen of all Russia. She clashed with her mother-in-law, the dowager empress, drew nasty caricatures of court members, failed to make favorable impressions on anyone, and tried in vain to produce the male heir that would secure her husband's line.

In desperation, Alix turned to spiritual "go-betweens," men whom she firmly believed were saints, and at last she finally did give birth to a son, the tsarevich, Alexis. But her son's hemophilia drove her to seek out a man - a man of God, she believed - who would prove to be one of the greatest players in the destruction of both her nation and her family: the man known as Rasputin, or "the debauched one."

From Alix's lonely childhood to her ill-fated marriage, from her careworn six pregnancies (she miscarried a son early) to her rash idolization of Grigory Rasputin, and finally to the blood-stained cellers of Ekaterinburg, Erickson leads us through the corridors of one woman's life, and leaves us, in the end, although we cannot love her, at least pitying her wretched life.

Despite what the other reviewers wrote, Carrolly Erickson is an extremely gifted historian and author and ALEXANDRA is a probing but sympathetic look at a tragic historical figure. As is to be expected with Ms. Erickson's books, the writing is vivid and engaging. Ms. Erickson took a complex subject matter -- not just Tsarina Alexandra, but the Russian political climate of her time -- and made it easy to understand for the casual historian.

An observation: I have long been a student/collector of all things relating to Marie Antoinette and I have read Ms. Erickson's book TO THE SCAFFOLD. I was surprised she did not make the connections between Antoinette and Alexandra - for surely there were many. Both women were vilified by their husband's subjects. Antoinette was called the Austrian Whore, Alexandra the German Whore. Both women attempted to learn French - and both women struggled with the language. Both women responded to criticism in childish ways (Antoinette, in leading a frivilous life, thereby lending credence to the pamphleteers charges. Alexandra, by drawing spiteful portraits). Perhaps Ms. Erickson would consider writing a book titled: The Shared Traits of Tragic Queens - Josephine, Antoinette, Alexandra

My only negative comment would be that Ms. Erickson seemed to provide little original information. A perusal of her FOOTNOTES shows that she relied heavily on previously written biographies.

Still, all in all, a fabulously enthralling read.