The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia by Candace Fleming

September 14, 2014 at 2:29 pm (Book review, books, Russophilia)

A photograph that haunts, taken in 1913.

The Romanov dynasty requires a male heir. Alas for the Tsarina Alexandra, one pregnancy after another produces daughters. She  becomes worn out with the effort. Then on the fifth try- triumph! Alexei Nikolaevich is born on August 12, 1904. Finally, the birth of a male heir insures an orderly succession.

But it was not to be.

Through his mother, Alexei had inherited a terrible affliction. Hemophilia is a disorder of the blood in which little or no clotting factor is present. Wounds take longer to heal, and worse, victims suffer internal bleeding that is difficult to stanch and liable to harm internal organs, tissues, and joints. In Alexei’s case, bleeding into his knee joints caused him excruciating pain and made him, from time to time, unable to walk.

While his parents obsessed over his health they kept up appearances, so that the outside world in general and their subjects in particular would never doubt their divine right to absolute sovereignty over the people of Russia. Yet they were curiously blind to the turbulence, anger, and desperation that were rife among those same people.

How the Romanovs could be so oblivious to what was going on right in front of them is certainly a mystery. What is not a a mystery – at least, not any longer – is the terrible price paid by the entire family for this willed ignorance.

The Family Romanov is being reviewed as a book for young readers. I’d be delighted if middle school or high school students became acquainted with this fascinating and chilling episode of history. The  story of the Romanovs is full of passion, romance, and tragedy. Above all, as you read this book, you sense the hand of fate hovering over this family, almost from the beginning of Nicholas’s disastrous reign.

One thing that Candace Fleming does that I found very effective was to show, by means of photographs and various writings from the era, the stark contrast between the privileged existence of the Russian aristocracy and the terrible grinding poverty in which the masses were forced to live. This is a complex story but I was in thrall to its relentless trajectory. The end is inevitable, almost preordained. I’ve read this story many times, and I’m stunned every time by the pity and the horror of it.

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The Romanovs and their world are well represented on YouTube. Here is some footage from British Pathé.  It is silent yet it speaks volumes:

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I had The Family Romanov out from the library, but because of its terrific bibliography I decided to download the e-book. Fleming cites a number of primary sources of which I’d not previously been aware.

Here is a sampling:

Alexander, Grand Duke of Russia. Once a Grand Duke. Garden City, NY: Garden City, 1932.
Alexandra, Empress of Russia. The Letters of the Tsaritsa to the Tsar, 1914–16. London: Duckworth, 1923.
Botkin, Gleb. The Real Romanovs. New York: Revell, 1931.
Buchanan, Meriel. The Dissolution of an Empire. London: John Murray, 1932.
Buchanan, Sir George. My Mission to Russia and Other Diplomatic Memories. 2 volumes. Boston: Little, Brown, 1923. Bulygin, Paul, and Alexander Kerensky. The Murder of the Romanovs. London: Hutchinson, 1935.

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In his book Stone Voices: The Search for Scotland, Neal Ascherson says of Russia that it’s a place “…where the past is said to be unpredictable.” Here is the first segment of a 1994 National Geographic special called The Last Tsar. It opens with a description of the post-Soviet reemergence- indeed one might almost say, resurrection – of Tsar Nicholas II:

Over a period of years, starting in the 19970s, bones belonging to the bodies of royal family members were uncovered, removed from the earth, and positively identified.   Finally, in 1998, the Romanovs and several others who’d been executed along with them were buried with all due solemnity in the Cathedral of St. Peter and St. Paul, in Saint Petersburg. Present at the interment were numerous dignitaries as well as living decendants of the House of Romanov.

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Russia’s history is a turbulent mixture of  cruelty, catastrophe, and exaltation. It can exert  a powerful pull on those who have fled from it. Sergei Rachmaninoff experienced great success as a musician and composer during his life in America and Western Europe. Yet he never stopped feeling like an exile. It is why Tony Palmers’ wonderful film biography of him is entitled The Harvest of Sorrow: