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

"All around me is treachery, cowardice, and deceit!"—diary of Nicholas II, on the day he abdicated "Behave with dignity; do not allow the former tsar and his family to be insulted or treated rudely."—Commissar Vasily Pankratov's instructions to the guard, September 1917 "The bullets...ricocheted off [the jewels in the daughters' corsets] and jumped around the room like hail."—Yakov Yurovsky, commissar in charge of the execution of the tsar and his family The compelling and poignant story of the arrest, captivity, and execution of the last tsar of Russia and his family during the revolution of 1917-1918 has been recounted—and romanticized—for decades. Now a new book explores the full range of events and reveals the thoughts, perceptions, and judgments of the individuals involved—Nicholas and Alexandra, their children, and the men who guarded and eventually killed them. This deeply moving book is based on documents and photographs from recently opened Russian archives and from Western collections. The documents, which appear for the first time in English (the language in which some of them were originally written), include correspondence between Nicholas and Alexandra during the February 1917 revolution; portions of their diaries; minutes of government meetings, telegrams, and other official papers concerning the arrest, confinement, and execution of the Romanovs; letters written by the captive tsar and his family to friends and relatives; appeals from Russian citizens concerning the fate of the Romanovs; and testimonies by the revolutionaries who guarded and executed them. Mark D. Steinberg sets the stage for this dramatic saga of revolution in a text that provides engrossing narrative and sensitive exploration of ideas and values and that draws on the whole range of archival and published documents. He and Vladimir M. Khrustalëv also provide notes identifying people and explaining terms. Together, the text and documents challenge the conventional image of Nicholas as weak and witless and of Alexandra as either the preoccupied mother of a hemophiliac heir or as the treasonous "German empress." Instead they tell an ironic tale of individuals whose fatalistic spirituality and unbending faith in an archaic political culture allowed them to fall victim to revolutionaries whose political dreams had yet to be proven false.

The compelling and poignant story of the arrest, captivity, and execution of the last tsar of Russia and his family during the revolution of 1917-1918 has been recounted-and romanticized-for decades. Now a new book explores the full range of events and reveals the thoughts, perceptions, and judgments of the individuals involved-Nicholas and Alexandra, their children, and the men who guarded and eventually killed them.

Publishers Weekly

Based largely on previously classified materials from Moscow and Russian regional archives released only since the late 1980s, this valuable documentary record recreates the arrest, captivity and execution of the imperial Romanov family. It draws on letters, diary excerpts, telegraphs, minutes of government meetings and official orders, woven together by the authors' interpretive commentary. Tsar Nicholas II's personal writings reveal an autocrat of fatalistic spirituality who believed that the common people would ``come to their senses'' and rescue him. His reactionary wife, former German princess Alexandra, reinforced his perception of the Russian people as simple, devoted and childlike. Yale history professor Steinberg and Khrustalv, historian at Russia's State Archive in Moscow, dispute the widely held view that orders to execute the Romanov family came personally from Lenin and the top party leadership. They argue that the inconclusive, circumstantial evidence favors a different scenario: party leaders in Moscow and Bolsheviks in the Urals agreed to put the Romanovs on trial, with execution as an alternative if the military situation dictated. Illustrated with photos, maps and facsimiles, this documentary sets the Romanovs' ordeal in the context of the Bolshevik crushing of liberal attempts to ensure the royal family's safety and aborted rightist conspiracies to free the Romanovs. History Book Club selection. (Oct.)

Contents 8 List of Illustrations 10 Preface 14 Acknowledgments 16 Note on the Documents 18 INTRODUCTION Nicholas and Alexandra, an Intellectual Portrait 22 CHAPTER ONE Revolution 60 CHAPTER TWO Under Arrest at Tsarskoe Selo 137 CHAPTER THREE Siberian Captivity 222 CHAPTER FOUR Death in Yekaterinburg 330 Chronology 420 Glossary of Personal and Institutional Names 432 Genealogy of the Imperial Family 449 Notes 452 Select Bibliography 472 Document and Illustration Credits 476 Index 486 The compelling and poignant story of the arrest, captivity, and execution of the last tsar of Russia and his family during the revolution of 1917-1918 has been recounted--and romanticized--for decades. This book explores the full range of events and reveals the thoughts, perceptions, and judgements of the individuals involved. 46 illustrations. Covering the arrest, captivity and execution of the last tsar of Russia and his family during the revolution of 1917-1918, this study explores the full range of events and reveals the thoughts, perceptions and judgments of Nicholas and Alexandra, their children, and the men who killed them. THE story of the arrest, captivity, and execution of the last Russian tsar and his family in 1917-1918 has long appealed to the public imagination in both Russia and the West.