I was in elementary school when I first encountered this book… My AG teacher had handed to me a monster-sized paperback tome that was as intriguing for its size as it was for its potentially R-rated content. I still don’t know why she gave me this particular book since, at the time, all I wanted to do was sail down (well… up…) the Nile, but it must have planted the seeds for an interest that would only germinate decades later. 1917 was, for years, the most memorable date bouncing around in my head, but it was always this ephemeral sort of idea where I kind of remembered why I knew it and I kind of remembered why it was important. Of course I was required to read Animal Farm a few years after working my way through the sad story of Nicholas & Alexandra, but the full depth of the connection eluded me until this week. Ever since Vonnegut put me on the path to Dostoevsky years ago (those Russians and Germans are just inextricable, aren’t they?) I’ve been slowly absorbing the fascinating philosophies of pre-Revolution Russia. I remained careful, however, not to stray too close to that cursed date without realizing just how incredible my gap in knowledge and lack of historical context truly was. Nor did I realize how I was depriving myself of one of the most humanizing and beautiful stories of a family who simply wanted to love and protect one another and their country through trials and tribulations few of us could ever fathom.
As thoroughly captivating as the political history is, it was not the jewels, the castles, the balls, titles, mystics, or machines of war that were the most engaging aspects of this near-fairy tale. Massie paints such a detailed and intimate picture of the Imperial Family that I immediately felt personally involved in their plight, and the larger context in which this story played out became, at most, a secondary concern. It was the journey, at first, of a young couple in love and, finally, a strong family in love with each other and their country that completely prohibited me from putting this book down or even remotely removing myself from the story as it slowly and painfully wound its way toward its inevitable heart-wrenching conclusion. One of the final guards, Anatoly Yakimov, crystalized exactly why it was impossible not to empathize with the titular family, “After I had seen them several times I began to feel entirely different towards them; I began to pity them. I pitied them as human beings.” It is in this quote that the beauty of Massie’s tale is made crystal clear. Despite Nicholas’s detractors, despite Alexandra’s insistent reliance on unreliable advice, and despite the obliviousness with which they both viewed the reality around them and the calamities that followed them, these characters became real to me, and the sympathy, empathy, and pain I felt for and with them was equally real.
From the outset, how could I not have fallen in love with a woman who loved so purely and was so eloquent as to send shivers down my spine nearly a century and a quarter removed? “I dreamed that I was loved,” Alexandra wrote, “I woke and found it true and thanked God on my knees for it. True love is the gift which God has given, daily, stronger, deeper, fuller, purer.” Her assurances of her love for Nicholas are haunting yet give hope to even this most hopeless of tales. “At last united,” she writes on their wedding day, “bound for life, and when this life is ended, we meet again in the other world and remain together for eternity. Yours, yours.” Not that Nicholas’s heart was any less full as, at the time of his “irreparable grief” at the unexpected death of his father, he still sees in his heart that, “God has sent me a happiness of which I never dared to dream, in giving me Alix.” Massie’s awe and respect for this sun-blessed yet star-crossed relationship was readily apparent not only in the narrative he created but from his words directly. Although he often came across as an apologist at best or someone with an agenda at worst, he made no qualms about making clear his feelings about the two lovers: “No man ever was gentler or more compassionate to his wife, or spent more time with his afflicted son. However this last Russian tsar may be judged as a monarch, his behavior as a husband and father was something which shone nobly apart.” It is with this impression, not the debacles of failed campaigns, misplaced trust, hidden plans, mismanaged governments, or a suffering population that I approached the lives of the Tsar and Tsaritsa. Given the overwhelmingly positive portrait that Massie painted of the people behind the titles, it was difficult if not impossible to make my way through the book with a critical eye focused on the historicity of the narrative being told. That, perhaps, changed this from an academic pursuit to a pastime of pure pleasure.
To speak of Russia’s last first family, especially in relation to Massie’s work, without mentioning Alexis’s “affliction” would be, I feel, to do a great disservice to both. Despite his obvious affection for the Imperial couple, it is in regards to this subject that I most often felt as though Massie had an agenda in his writing beyond pure historic inquiry. He does not hide it as he notes that a large impetus for his research was his own son’s affliction with the same disease, and I appreciate the forthrightness with which he described his own work and his motivation for undertaking it. Without this personal motivation I would have been reading a very different book. I cannot begrudge his bias, but I also could not help but pause every now and again and marvel at the importance he placed on the hemophilia of the Tsarevich. So many decisions quite obviously depended on the state of poor Alexis’s health, but I could not help but wonder if the consequences of these decisions were dictated by this disease less than Massie implied. It seems very likely that, as Massie extrapolates from Kerensky’s thoughts, “if there had been no hemophilia, there would have been no Rasputin,” but I am not quite as convinced of Kerensky’s original claim that, “if there had been no Rasputin, there would have been no Lenin.” Alexandra’s love for her son was the same undying, unerring, and untainted love that I imagine any mother feels for her child. Magnified, as it should be, by her love for her husband (and vice-versa) her adoration for her son increased even further in her eyes and her heart due to the role the he was set to play in the country which she had also grown to love so completely. Although her love for Alexis combined with his own frailty certainly opened the door for Rasputin to exert his influence over the Empress, it is hard to imagine that she, who so desired to be one with her husband and her country, would have remained silent while so removed from the presence of one and the affairs of the other. Perhaps without Rasputin’s influence on the particular requests she made of her husband revolution could have been averted… or at least postponed, but as Massie himself concludes, “Even before the birth of the Tsarevich, autocracy was in retreat.” It is undeniable that Alexis’s hemophilia certainly played a role in exactly how and when these fatal events occurred, but the decline of autocracy would have left a power vacuum in Russia no matter the circumstances. A vacuum that must have been filled by, if not Lenin, then whom? It is, naturally, speculation, but I did find it difficult to accept Massie’s hypothesis as fully as it seems he intended.
This was only a slight hindrance to my enjoyment of the book and the high esteem in which it has caused me to hold the last of the Romanovs. To the end they represented the best of humanity and personified the only way in which I believe one can truly love or be loved. Massie made a similar, if less personal, observation stating that, “A remarkable feature of these letters [between Alexandra and Nicholas] was the freshness of Alexandra’s love. After two decades of marriage, she still wrote like a young girl.” Through the ups and downs of political intrigue, military blundering, national suffering, and personal loss my heart finally broke once it seemed all was lost. All might have been lost, but through the strength of what Alexandra and Nicholas shared, it is plain that what was most important remained. “With tears in her eyes, Alexandra assured him that the husband and father was infinitely more precious to her than the tsar whose throne she had shared. Nicholas finally broke. Laying his head on his wife’s breast, he sobbed like a child.”
I had decided to pick this book up again in an attempt to expand the breadth of my historical knowledge… as noted, I felt like much of the historical context was glossed over and presented in a way intended to spark sympathy for the Romanovs. Nevertheless, I came away feeling empowered with knowledge I always knew I lacked. Never before have I held had such a firm grasp on the genesis of World War I. Never before have I felt nearly as qualified to have an opinion on the state of Eastern Europe and our Russian ally. Never before could I have come close to understanding the discontent that drives men of a certain disposition to pull the trigger against the Stolypins and Franz Ferdinands of this world whose idealistic goals seem to stand in the way of their own selfish and egotistical desires. Never before have I understood how it is possible to hate an idea or an institution so much that you forget the humanity of the people who represent that idea. We would all do well to remember the words of the old soldier Yakimov in our modern political discourse. Although this was my initial goal, I ended up learning as much about myself, what it means to love, and what it means to be human as I did about any historical timeline. Massie has created something absolutely brilliant. A stunning look at an incredibly complex political situation that shines, not with the brilliance of ideas, the intricacies of hidden power plays, or the egoism of verbal parlays, but with the naked beauty of the selfless human heart and soul striving for nothing more than knowing that, in the end, misguided though they may be, they strove for Love, Truth, and a belief in the value of their fellow man.
As I make such bold statements, I am acutely aware of the fact that I am not reading primary historical documents, nor am I even reading an unbiased secondary document. Massie clearly had goals, but he executed beautifully. I was hesitant to pick this book up again just based on the size, but I tore through it, and every moment was an absolute joy despite hoping and praying with every turn of the page that some miracle would change the end I knew was coming. I will now have to read Massie’s follow-up, The Last Chapter, with an equally heavy heart, and after that I am exhilarated by the idea of re-reading Animal Farm armed with more knowledge than my ignorant adolescent self could possibly have possessed.
That said, it has become a regular occurrence that I find a new appreciation for teachers in my past whose lessons I am just now learning. Thank you Robert Massie for a wonderful journey, and thank you Mrs. Taylor for setting me on its course.
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"Nicholas and Alexandra..." is extremely interesting, especially as a study of a dynasty's downfall, and the elements that caused that collapse. Rasputin played a major role in Nicholas' erratic reign, partnering with Alexandra to "run the show" while the Czar feebly lead the troops...A family with a major secret that they tried to hide from the world and a Czarina who disliked the public; thus, isolating them from the Russian people who, no doubt, wondered: What was going on with the Romanov's? And: Who is this stinky wanna-be voodoo master that the family loves?A superbly written book that mystifies and even terrorizes the reader as the Russians start to revolt--and they did so viciously--and Nicholas II complacently ended the dynasty.It's a mystifying story that could have been avoided had Nicholas set a precedent for Great Britain's Edward VIII.
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