The Last of the Tsars

The Last of the Tsars

Author: Robert Service

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2017-09-05

Total Pages: 305

ISBN-13: 1681775727

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A riveting account of the last eighteen months of Tsar Nicholas II's life and reign from one of the finest Russian historians writing today. In March 1917, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of All the Russias, abdicated and the dynasty that had ruled an empire for three hundred years was forced from power by revolution. Now Robert Service, the eminent historian of Russia, examines Nicholas's life and thought from the months before his momentous abdication to his death, with his family, in Ekaterinburg in July 1918. The story has been told many times, but Service's deep understanding of the period and his forensic examination of previously untapped sources, including the Tsar's diaries and recorded conversations, as well as the testimonies of the official inquiry, shed remarkable new light on his troubled reign, also revealing the kind of Russia that Nicholas wanted to emerge from the Great War. The Last of the Tsars is a masterful study of a man who was almost entirely out of his depth, perhaps even willfully so. It is also a compelling account of the social, economic and political ferment in Russia that followed the February Revolution, the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917, and the beginnings of Lenin's Soviet socialist republic.


Nicholas and Alexandra

Nicholas and Alexandra

Author: Robert K. Massie

Publisher: Random House

Published: 2011-11-08

Total Pages: 663

ISBN-13: 0307788474

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A “magnificent and intimate” (Harper’s) modern classic of Russian history, the spellbinding story of the love that ended an empire—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great “A moving, rich book . . . [This] revealing, densely documented account of the last Romanovs focuses not on the great events . . . but on the royal family and their evil nemesis. . . . The tale is so bizarre, no melodrama is equal to it.”—Newsweek In this commanding book, New York Times bestselling author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of the Russian empire to tell the story of the Romanovs’ lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history—the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.


Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution

Crime and Punishment in the Russian Revolution

Author: Tsuyoshi Hasegawa

Publisher: Harvard University Press

Published: 2017-10-25

Total Pages: 367

ISBN-13: 0674972066

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Introduction -- Prelude to revolution -- Rising crime before the October revolution -- Why did the crime rate shoot up? -- Militias rise and fall -- An epidemic of mob justice -- Crime after the Bolshevik takeover -- The Bolsheviks and the militia -- Conclusion


Thirteen years at the Russian court

Thirteen years at the Russian court

Author: Pierre Gilliard

Publisher: Good Press

Published: 2021-11-05

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13:

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This book is a memoir written by Pierre Gilliard, the French language tutor to the five children of Emperor Nicholas II of Russia from 1905 to 1918. It was published following the Russian Revolution of 1917 and the execution of the Russian Imperial family. In this book, Gilliard described Tsarina Alexandra's torment over her son's hemophilia and her faith in the ability of starets Grigori Rasputin to heal the boy.


The House of Government

The House of Government

Author: Yuri Slezkine

Publisher: Princeton University Press

Published: 2017-08-07

Total Pages: 1123

ISBN-13: 1400888174

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On the 100th anniversary of the Russian Revolution, the epic story of an enormous apartment building where Communist true believers lived before their destruction The House of Government is unlike any other book about the Russian Revolution and the Soviet experiment. Written in the tradition of Tolstoy's War and Peace, Grossman’s Life and Fate, and Solzhenitsyn’s The Gulag Archipelago, Yuri Slezkine’s gripping narrative tells the true story of the residents of an enormous Moscow apartment building where top Communist officials and their families lived before they were destroyed in Stalin’s purges. A vivid account of the personal and public lives of Bolshevik true believers, the book begins with their conversion to Communism and ends with their children’s loss of faith and the fall of the Soviet Union. Completed in 1931, the House of Government, later known as the House on the Embankment, was located across the Moscow River from the Kremlin. The largest residential building in Europe, it combined 505 furnished apartments with public spaces that included everything from a movie theater and a library to a tennis court and a shooting range. Slezkine tells the chilling story of how the building’s residents lived in their apartments and ruled the Soviet state until some eight hundred of them were evicted from the House and led, one by one, to prison or their deaths. Drawing on letters, diaries, and interviews, and featuring hundreds of rare photographs, The House of Government weaves together biography, literary criticism, architectural history, and fascinating new theories of revolutions, millennial prophecies, and reigns of terror. The result is an unforgettable human saga of a building that, like the Soviet Union itself, became a haunted house, forever disturbed by the ghosts of the disappeared.


The Kitchen Boy

The Kitchen Boy

Author: Robert Alexander

Publisher: Penguin

Published: 2003-01-27

Total Pages: 213

ISBN-13: 1101200367

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Soon to be a major motion picture starring Kristin Scott Thomas (The English Patient), directed by Stefan Ruzowitzky (The Counterfeiters) Drawing from decades of work, travel, and research in Russia, Robert Alexander re-creates the tragic, perennially fascinating story of the final days of Nicholas and Alexandra Romanov as seen through the eyes of their young kitchen boy, Leonka. Now an ancient Russian immigrant, Leonka claims to be the last living witness to the Romanovs’ brutal murders and sets down the dark secrets of his past with the imperial family. Does he hold the key to the many questions surrounding the family’s murder? Historically vivid and compelling, The Kitchen Boy is also a touching portrait of a loving family that was in many ways similar, yet so different, from any other. "Ingenious...Keeps readers guessing through the final pages." —USA Today


The Race to Save the Romanovs

The Race to Save the Romanovs

Author: Helen Rappaport

Publisher: Macmillan + ORM

Published: 2018-06-26

Total Pages: 388

ISBN-13: 1250151236

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In this international bestseller investigating the murder of the Russian Imperial Family, Helen Rappaport embarks on a quest to uncover the various plots and plans to save them, why they failed, and who was responsible. The murder of the Romanov family in July 1918 horrified the world, and its aftershocks still reverberate today. In Putin's autocratic Russia, the Revolution itself is considered a crime, and its anniversary was largely ignored. In stark contrast, the centenary of the massacre of the Imperial Family was commemorated in 2018 by a huge ceremony attended by the Patriarch of the Russian Orthodox Church. While the murders themselves have received major attention, what has never been investigated in detail are the various plots and plans behind the scenes to save the family—on the part of their royal relatives, other governments, and Russian monarchists loyal to the Tsar. Rappaport refutes the claim that the fault lies entirely with King George V, as has been the traditional view for the last century. The responsibility for failing the Romanovs must be equally shared. The question of asylum for the Tsar and his family was an extremely complicated issue that presented enormous political, logistical and geographical challenges at a time when Europe was still at war. Like a modern day detective, Helen Rappaport draws on new and never-before-seen sources from archives in the US, Russia, Spain and the UK, creating a powerful account of near misses and close calls with a heartbreaking conclusion. With its up-to-the-minute research, The Race to Save the Romanovs is sure to replace outdated classics as the final word on the fate of the Romanovs.


Tsar Nicholas II

Tsar Nicholas II

Author: Hourly History

Publisher: Createspace Independent Publishing Platform

Published: 2017-12-14

Total Pages: 46

ISBN-13: 9781977735416

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Tsar Nicholas II Reigning from 1894 to 1917, Nicholas II was the last emperor of Russia. His rule served as the bookends between what were essentially two Russian empires; the one that his forefathers carved out through imperial ambition and the one dictated by the zealous communists of the Soviet Union bent on socialist expansion. Nicholas was by most accounts a conflicted ruler; a man viewed as kind and generous in his mannerisms yet alleged to be greatly disconnected and apathetic toward the subjects he was supposed to rule over. Inside you will read about... - Nicholas and the Funeral Bride - The Coronation Tragedy - Bloody Sunday - Nicholas' Reluctant Reforms - Three Hundred Years of Romanov Rule - The Tsar and World War I - The Last Russian Tsar And much more! Find out how this last Russian tsar rose to power and oversaw the end of a 300-year family dynasty as it teetered, tottered, and finally fell over the edge of oblivion. This is the story of Tsar Nicholas II.


The Romanovs

The Romanovs

Author: Simon Sebag Montefiore

Publisher: Knopf

Published: 2016

Total Pages: 817

ISBN-13: 0307266524

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"The acclaimed author of Young Stalin and Jerusalem gives readers an accessible, lively account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries."--NoveList.


The False Anastasia

The False Anastasia

Author: Pierre Gilliard

Publisher: CreateSpace

Published: 2014-04-28

Total Pages: 252

ISBN-13: 9781481108836

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The authors, Pierre Gilliard and Constantin Savitch have produced an excellent, incisive and detailed analytical account of Franziska Schanzkovski (aka Anna Anderson), a former Polish laborer who was used and misguided by a coterie of "friends" in an effort to gain control of the foreign investments of Tsar Nicholas II, particularly those in Germany. A prevalent rumor circulating at the time was that she was the illegitimate daughter of Tsar Nicholas II and Mathilde Kschessinska, the famous ballerina with whom he had a three-year romantic relationship prior to his marriage to Alexandra Feodorovna in 1894. The doctors who examined her after she made an unsuccessful suicide attempt in Berlin on 17 February 1920 stated that she appeared to have been born between 1892 and 1894. Moreover, Anna Anderson-who bore no physical, mental or emotional similiarity to Anastasia Nicholaievna Romanov-was none other than a mentally unbalanced unmarried woman who was gradually and delusively led to believe that she was really Anastasia Romanov. Yet, when found, she spoke only Polish and German. On the other hand, the real Anastasia did not speak these two languages, but did speak English, French and Russian very well. To paraphrase Disraeli, in his book, "Konigsby," the true identity and saga of the real Anastasia and her family is enmeshed in deep intrigue, which can never be imagined by someone who is not behind the scenes. The saga of the real Anastasia Nicolaievna began in Peterhof, Russia on 18 June 1901 and ended in Newport, Rhode Island on 31 January 1997. The other members of the family lived out their lives in relative seclusion and anonymity as a result of a secret codicil in the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk on 3 March 1918 that ended the war between Germany and Russia. This fact was also personally related by Lenin to Armand Hammer. Front cover photo: The Imperial Family, without the only son Alexei.