66 of 68 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A gritty, day-by-day narrative of 14 days leading to a massacre, February 9, 2009
Anyone picking up this book is likely to have read some of the other literature on the Romanovs or the Russian Revolution, notably the Robert Massie biography,
Nicholas and Alexandra and the follow up volume,
The Romanovs: the Final Chapter. This is an altogether bleaker narrative -- if you can imagine such a thing -- that revolves around the day-to-day lives of the Romanovs, their captors and, at a distance, Lenin, George V and others who helped determine their fate.
The format is straightforward: Rappaport uses each of the last 14 days of the lives of the former Tsar and his family (the unpopular Empress Alexandra, their hemophiliac son, Alexey, and four daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia) as the focus of a chapter. In each chapter, she explores the state of the debate about the Tsar's future or the issues that were likely to affect that -- such as the relentless advance of Czech 'White' troops in the direction of the city of Ekaterinburg where the Romanov family now lived in almost complete isolation from the outside world. The result is a relentless "tick tock" account of how hope slipped away, of how the family lived side by side with guards who were making meticulous preparations for their deaths, of the petty indignities they suffered and the petty squabbles in which they still indulged.
It's a chilling book to read, and it culminates in a horrifying account of the massacre of the family and four of their servants in a basement room that I -- despite being familiar with the story, an avid history reader and veteran of many thrillers -- couldn't complete in one sitting. Within minutes, Rappaport tells us, some of the executioners and other guards were weeping at the bloodbath; some of the firing squad (a very loose term in the circumstances) were replaced at the last moment because they refused to shoot the young girls (in their teens to early 20s).
This unusual structure to the book not only allows Rappaport to heighten the tension to an extent that is unusual among non-fiction historical accounts of events now more than 90 years distant, but enables her to fill in details of what was happening elsewhere as, in Ekaterinburg, the former Tsar recorded in his diary the arrival of the new guards who were to become his executioners, or as the Grand Duchesses helped two temporary maids scrub their floors a day or so before their execution. While the Tsar was confined to a sweltering room, reading history books behind whitewashed windows nailed shut to prevent him from seeing even a glimpse of sky, his cousin, George V of England, celebrated his silver wedding anniversary and attended a baseball game organized by the US military. Contrasts like that just heighten the claustrophobic world that the Romanov family now inhabited, and signaled the kind of detachment from the rest of the world that normally is displayed only by those diagnosed with a terminal illness.
It's in the research and structure of this book that Rappaport's skills truly shine. The writing is good, but not great; of a more pedestrian nature than the book's other strengths would lead the reader to expect, and it occasionally relapses into too-fervid prose (as when she compares Alexandra to a female Iago). The only point when the writing actually hampers the book, however, is when she diverges for too long from the core narrative -- the narrow world of the Romanovs and how they arrived in it -- and spends that time to fill us in on the political jostling and arguments between different factions of the new Revolutionary government. Yes, they are important to understanding why the order was given for the murders -- but they could have been dealt with more elegantly and expeditiously.
Overall, this is an excellent book for anyone interested in the Romanovs in particular, and the final stages of Tsarist rule and the first days of the revolution, more generally. It works best as the kind of deeply personal narrative that the larger-than-life characters that the family became following their deaths has made it hard to write. (How many works of fiction are there devoted to the idea of the survival or one or more of the children? How many icons of the family's images now exist and they are revered as martyrs by devout members of the Russian Orthodox community?) In this book, we get a glimpse of reality; a balding emperor with bad teeth and a nicotine habit, frustrated by his inability to resort to exercise to keep his emotions under firm control; an empress addicted to morphine and other drugs, confined to a wheelchair and at once arrogant and fatalistic; four young women caught between their passionate love for their close-knit family and a desire to see the world, hair cropped short to battle head lice; the heir to the throne now mortally ill and unable to walk even a few steps.
For anyone who hasn't also read it,
The Flight of the Romanovs: A Family Saga would be an excellent book to read in conjunction with this one -- in a less personal and immediate way, it chronicles the fate of other family members, both in 1918 and the years that followed, including the Tsar's surviving siblings and his mother.
The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II I recall as being one of the first post-Soviet books to emerge from Russian research into the Tsar, and being a very compelling (albeit slightly idiosyncratic) work.
One warning to Kindle readers: while this book, as delivered on Kindle, includes a blow by blow description of many photos in the hardcover edition, the photos themselves are not included in the Kindle e-book -- disappointing. The Kindle edition, oddly, does include a complete index, but with page numbers, which is of little help when using a Kindle.
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Three and a half stars..., March 8, 2009
Since my high school years, I have been enthralled with the story of Nicholas and Alexandra Romanov and their tragic story. Every year or so, I need a Romanov-fix, and Helen Rappaport provided just that with her new book, The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg. There is much to like in this book, but also, a few detractions.
There are hundreds and hundreds of books on the last tsar and his family. Many of them just rehash the same information, over and over again. Rappaport tries to give a more in-depth look at the last 14 days that the Romanovs were in captivity in Ekaterinburg. She gives just enough background for those who may not know the entire story. Some of her descriptions and observations are first-rate. In describing Nicholas, "how had this devout, insistently dull and dogmatic little man, whose primary interest was family life, come to be demonised as the repository of all that was corrupt, reactionary and despotic about the Romanov dynasty?" When the family was descending into the basement of the Ipatiev House on that July evening, she writes "Twenty-three steps--one for every year of Nicholas's disastrous reign--now led him and his family to their collective fate." I especially liked learning more about the city of Ekaterinburg, as well as Woodrow Wilson's dilemma about aiding Russia. Rappaport's research in this respect is well done.
But what bothered me about The Last Days of the Romanovs is that there are no endnotes. There were so many times that I would read a new fact--something I had never heard before. My first instinct was to see where it came from so that I could learn more. The author gives her reasons for not including endnotes in her "Notes on Sources", but I don't agree with them. I'm not sure about the accuracy of the Index. I went to find Boris Yeltsin (she spells it Eltsin) and couldn't find him anywhere. Yet, he is mentioned on page 219. Finally, there are some minor mistakes throughout this book. One example involves Nicholas and Alexandra arriving in Ekaterburg, "It was Passion Week and the bells--the beautiful bells that had so beguiled Anton Checkov--were ringing out across the city." Three weeks later, the rest of their children joined them. "But the closely interdependent family unit was once more reunited and what greater joy could there be than for it to be during Passion Week--the most sacred festival in the Orthodox calendar." Passion Week is Passion Week. It is not three weeks long.
I enjoyed The Last Days of the Romanovs and I will add it to my extensive collection of Romanov books (now numbering over 100). But I thought Rappaport could have made this a better book.
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14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Must read for Romanovophiles, February 19, 2009
Fascination with the murder of the Romanov family in July 1918 shows no
sign of waning. This new book takes a micro approach, focusing in on the last
13 days of the family's claustrophobic, tense life in Yekaterinburg.
Rappaport fills out her story with vivid detail and superb characterization,
building the tension and drama to its brutal climax, sparing no stomach-turning
details. She draws us in so well, that we very nearly smell the dusty drapes
and taste the sweat hanging thick in the air of that tragic Siberian summer. We
can't stop reading, wondering what will happen next, even though we know full
well what happens next.
Meticulously researched and intimately drawn, this is a must read for
anyone interested in the sad fate of the Romanovs, or for anyone interested in
plumbing the depths of human depravity, witnessing the nobility of calm resignation,
or reliving the tragedy that foretold the executions of hundreds of
thousands of innocents in the decades to come.
Review as published in
Russian Life
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