Customer Reviews

The Fall of the Romanovs: Political Dreams and Personal Struggles in a Time of Revolution (Annals of Communism Series)

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A wonderful, wonderful book about the Romanovs' captivity and eventual death. Consisting almost entirely of letters, diaries, memoirs, and other first-person accounts, it tells the story of their last days in the words of those who were there. Compelling and spooky. Reading Aleksandra's last diary entry made only hours before they were killed-- reading the account of their murder written by their killers-- it's absolutely chilling. I couldn't put it down.

It is difficult to express the debt of gratitude that it owed to the authors of this book. For all too long an America scholar should have cast a critical eye on the Soviet files regarding the story the Soviet regime wanted the world to believe. A healthy dose of realism and - if you read between the lines - skepticism was echoed in the writing and analysis. Steinberg scrutunized his findings with a view to the historical record he would leave behind.

He has accomplished a much needed task for those of us who value scholarship not sensationalism. And the effort is a much needed addition to any Romanov library. My edition has so many dog-earred pages and has been so used that the spine is lovingly weakened from use.

I shall buy another.

The book, The Fall of the Romanovs, is a great narrative filled with primary documents of the family's path from the most powerful position in Russia into imprisonment and eventually death. Basically, the author explains the attitudes of Nicholas and Alexandra as lovers and rulers. He puts them in the light of leaders as well as family men and women. There are four basic stages explained which give a very nice organized fashion that presents the life in power and downfall of the family. First the tsar and tsarina are discussed in detail from a personal viewpoint. Next, the author moves on to describe the revolution that forced the abdication of the tsar. Then, the reader is taken through daily life and happenings while the family is under arrest at the Selo. Finally, the author narrates the family's captivity in Siberia and their inevitable death at the hands of revolutionaries in Yekaterinburg.

The book is introduced as an unbiased analysis of the downfall of the tsar and his family. However, it is easy to tell that in many aspects the author discusses the family as the good guys and throws a dark shadow over the people who held them captive and later killed them. In many aspects the author analyzes situations and the outcome turns into the portrayal of the family as harmless victims to uncontrollable change in society. The author supported his analysis with a huge number of primary sources, which made it very hard to look upon the royal family as bloody rulers. Nevertheless, it was interesting how very little wrong doings of the family were thrown into the primary documents. The author does a very good job portraying his points through his analysis and backing it all up with sufficient documents and evidence.

The Fall of the Romanovs was published in 1995. It is a very recent book, which means that the author had access to never before seen archives made available to all only in the early 80s. I don't believe the book has a specific intended audience, however, I think anyone who finds the Russian revolution intriguing will find this book very interesting and informative. The book, with many new resources behind it, is able to address many aspects of the treatment of the Romanovs during their imprisonment and issues concerning their imprisonment and execution. In my opinion, the appeal to the reader and the analysis of issues brought up in the book are superbly accomplished throughout the text. With the incessant evidence and extremely organized structure, the book is a great read.

The overall purpose of the text is the layout of analysis and evidence in such a way as to allow the reader to see the story exactly as it is and be able to make their own conclusions. The author does a good job of laying out very accurate analysis backed up with great primary documents. Very organized, is the main style of the book. Every situation is correlated with a primary document towards the end of the chapter that gives the reader great insight. Photos and personal letters involving the Romanovs do a tremendous job portraying the royal family as not only rulers but also as a real family with real values. Everything is extremely relevant and makes the text very easy to read and understand.

This book definitely helped me understand one of the many aspects of the Russian Revolution a lot better. I know feel that I have a great deal more insight into the family that was probably most affected during this whole ordeal. The author does a great job explaining the importance of the personal characteristics of the tsar and his family as to why they were pushed out of power and came to such a tragic end. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who is studying the Russian revolution. Also, this book is just a great read for those who enjoy informative texts with a plot. The authors writing techniques, the historical importance of the events, as well as the numerous pieces of first hand evidence, make this a great informative read.

I loved this book, couldn't put it down. I found it to be wonderfully insightful. It was amazing to read the original letters. The commentary and order of the letters helped to bring out this complicated story as clearly as possible.

This book is a good example of why the average American knows nothing or next to nothing about the forty to fifty million people who were murdered by the Soviet regime. A book about the last tsar and his family should be the perfect opportunity to familiarize the general reader with the basic facts about the Soviet terror. After all, the murder of Nicholas II, his wife, five children, their family doctor and three servants, was but an opening salvo in the mass terror perpetrated against the general population by the Communist regime under both Lenin and Stalin. But you would never guess that, reading this book. While the author Mark Steinberg dwells with excrutiating detail on the personal and political failings of Nicholas and Alexandra, which contributed to the downfall of their dynasty, he neglects to put their murders into any larger historical context. Everything ends in 1918. In fact, in 1918 the terror was just beginning, and it would make the murders in Ekaterinburg look like a mere dress rehearsal (which, in a sense, they were).

Steinberg has much to say about the public's tendency to "romanticize" the Romanovs, but he doesn't offer any new insights into the underlying reasons for our continuing fascination with the family. Nevertheless, by publishing this book he himself profited from that fascination. Books about the Romanovs were extremely popular when this particular one came out. Perhaps the rush to publish and cash in on popular demand explains the overall poor quality of the translation of key documents (which unfortunately do not retain the flavor of the original Russian), as well as the many factual errors in this book. In the photograph section alone, there are three glaring mistakes: two of Nicholas' daughters, Olga and Marie, are misidentified as Alexandra in two separate photographs (is it really that hard to distinguish between teenaged girls and their middle-aged mother?); in yet another photograph, all of the imperial children are misidentified with the sole exception of the only boy, Alexey. Furthermore, it is simply not true that most of the documents in this book had not been published previously in the West. Most of them had already appeared in other books, and in better translations, too.

Steinberg's so-called "objectivity" really amounts to no more than moral relativism and superficial historical analysis. People who want to read an in-depth, objective, and thoughtful account of the Russian Revolution should read Orlando Figes' excellent history, A People's Tragedy; people who want an in-depth account of the murders and the events leading up to them should read Robert K. Massie's The Romanovs: The Final Chapter or Edward Radzinsky's admittedly very subjective biography of Nicholas II (where, in fact, most of the documents pertaining to the murders were originally published). Personal accounts of the family are available in dozens of contemporary memoirs. Sergei Mironenko's Nicholas and Alexandra: A Lifelong Passion, is a far more inclusive collection of excerpts from the family's personal letters and diaries (including the children's); the translations are very well done and the book as a whole is quite simply excellent.

Unfortunately, a large amount of historical material from Russian archives still awaits translation into English. For example, there are several accounts of the murders by perpetrators and other firsthand witnesses which have been published in Russia but which, for whatever reason, Steinberg chose not to include here.

Finally, I would suggest that one of the reasons some of us "romanticize" (remember?) the last Romanovs is that they have come to symbolize the millions of (mainly anonymous) victims of the Soviet regime. Of the eleven people murdered in the Ipatiev House by the Bolsheviks on the night of July 16-17, 1918, only two, Nicholas and Alexandra, had ever held any political power. The remaining nine people were all, by any definition, complete innocents: four girls (Olga, 22 years old; Tatiana, 21; Marie, 19; Anastasia, 17); their brother, Alexey, not yet 14 years old; the family physician, Eugene Botkin; the cook Kharitonov, the valet Trupp, and the maid Anna Demidova. There is a symbolic power in remembering these victims, for persons of both sexes and of every age, class, and profession would be murdered by the Soviet state in the next forty years. Interestingly, Steinberg doesn't provide us with any photographs of the murdered servants. Apparently, he's as much of a romantic snob as the rest of us.

I suppose most who read this are looking for information about the Ramanovs...however, I was writing an essay about Rasputin's influence on the last Russian dynastic family and its fall, and the authors fail to mention much of his affects on their decisions--only briefly are Alexandra's ideas, changed with the encounter of Rasputin, looked at. Thus, the authors don't seem to look for all substantial reasons of the fall of the Ramanovs, and the piece is not as worth while as it could have been.

The 2 DVD set provided good historical background for the Czars of Russia. It was easy to watch. It is obviously several programs stichted together, so the repetition between segments was a bit redundant.

This is one of the better books concerning the final days of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. A "must" for anyone who collects books on the Romanovs.

This book is absolutely horrible. The photos are mislabeled (Olga and Maria as Alexandra?!) and there's nothing new and interesting. I don't think it deserves even one star.