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On the sweltering summer night of July 16, 1918, in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg, a group of assassins led an unsuspecting Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, the desperately ill Tsarevich, and their four beautiful daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, into a basement room where they were shot and then bayoneted to death.
This is the story of those murders, which ended three hundred years of Romanov rule and set their stamp on an era of state-orchestrated terror and brutal repression.
The Last Days of the Romanovs counts down to the last, tense hours of the family’s lives, stripping away the over-romanticized versions of previous accounts. The story focuses on the family inside the Ipatiev House, capturing the oppressive atmosphere and the dynamics of a group—the Romanovs, their servants, and guards—thrown together by extraordinary events.
Marshaling overlooked evidence from key witnesses such as the British consul to Ekaterinburg, Sir Thomas Preston, American and British travelers in Siberia, and the now-forgotten American journalist Herman Bernstein, Helen Rappaport gives a brilliant account of the political forces swirling through the remote Urals town. She conveys the tension of the watching world: the Kaiser of Germany and George V, King of England—both, like Alexandra, grandchildren of Queen Victoria—their nations locked in combat as the First World War drew to its bitter end. And she draws on recent releases from the Russian archives to challenge the view that the deaths were a unilateral act by a maverick group of the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks, identifying a chain of command that stretches directly, she believes, to Moscow—and to Lenin himself.
Telling the story in a compellingly new and dramatic way, The Last Days of the Romanovs brings those final tragic days vividly alive against the backdrop of Russia in turmoil, on the brink of a devastating civil war.
- Sales Rank: #283248 in Books
- Brand: St Martins Press
- Published on: 2009-02-03
- Released on: 2009-02-03
- Ingredients: Example Ingredients
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 9.55" h x 1.10" w x 6.48" l, 1.15 pounds
- Binding: Hardcover
- 272 pages
From Publishers Weekly
Synthesizing a variety of sources, British historian Rappaport (Joseph Stalin) details the Romanovs last two weeks, imprisoned in a cramped private house in Ekaterinburg, a violently anti-czarist industrial city in the Ural Mountains where Nicholas II; his wife, Alexandra; and their five children were executed on July 17, 1918. The czars rescue was a low priority for the Allies, and several escape plots by Russian monarchists came to naught. A lax guard was replaced by a rigorous new regime on July 4, headed by Yakov Yurovsky, whose familys impoverished Siberian exile had fueled his burning hatred for the imperial family, and his ruthless assistant and surrogate son, Grigory Nikulin. How the last czar and his family died was one of Russias best-kept secrets for decades, and Rappaport spares none of the gory details of the panicked bloodbath (it took an entire clip of bullets to finish off the czarevitch because an undergarment sewn with jewels protected the boys torso) and botched burial of the corpses. Although parts of the Romanov saga are familiar and Rappaports sympathy for the czar often seems naïve, this is an absorbing, lucid and authoritative work. 16 pages of photos. (Feb. 3)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
From Booklist
Since the end of the Soviet Union, details about the murder of the Russian royal family in 1918 have emerged and inspired several accounts of the killings. Author Rappaport, a talented British writer of narrative history, telescopes the post-abdication story of the Romanovs into the two weeks preceding their deaths, during which the final elements of decision in Moscow and execution in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg fell into place. As storyteller, Rappaport skillfully contrasts the ignorance of the family members of their impending doom with the preparations of the Bolsheviks on the scene. She renders astute personality portraits of the seven members of the family, noting especially the beauty of the daughters that, to a degree, underlies popular interest in and horror about what happened to the Romanovs. Such sentimentality was alien to Bolsheviks waging class war, however, and Rappaport describes the chain of command from Lenin to the firing squad with responsibility-fixing emphasis. Unavoidably ghastly in her last pages, Rappaport, whose research included visits to the murder and burial sites, has produced an emotionally powerful work of history. --Gilbert Taylor
Review
Praise for The Last Days of the Romanovs
“The brutal 1918 massacre of the Romanov family may be familiar, but in Russian scholar Rappaport's hands, the tale becomes as shocking and immediate as a thriller. Drawing on new archives and forensics, she crafts a portrait of the final weeks of Russia's last imperial family, cramped in the House of Special Purpose in Ekaterinburg. Though Tsar Nicholas's rule was harsh, the love and religious devotion he and his family shared makes them sympathetic. The Romanovs are now saints in Russian Orthodoxy, symbols of faith and hope. This gripping read helps you understand why.”—People magazine (3 ½ stars)
“Synthesizing a variety of sources, Rappaport details the Romanovs’ last two weeks. . . . How the last czar and his family died was one of Russia’s best-kept secrets for decades, and Rappaport spares none of the gory details of the panicked bloodbath . . . and botched burial of the corpses . . . this is an absorbing, lucid and authoritative work.” —Publishers Weekly
“British historian Rappaport combines detailed scholarship with an engaging narrative style. . . . The book's most gripping sections describe the days and hours leading up to and including the family's execution. Rappaport spares few details . . . Solid political and social history, related with the vigor of a true-crime thriller.” —Kirkus Reviews
“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.”—Russian Life
“The Romanovs are to Russian history what the Civil War is to American history -- an inexhaustible source of interest. . . . Rappaport's impressive research . . . sheds new and sometimes controversial light on the Imperial victims and what transpired. But it is her finely honed literary skills . . . that make this book so compelling. . . . Dramatic, sorrowful and heart-poundingly intense, this excellent book is certain to win a new audience for the endlessly fascinating panorama of Russian history.” —Star Tribune (Minneapolis)
“The Last Days of the Romanovs was, quite simply, stunning. It dealt with a subject that has long fascinated me, and I can say without reservation that it is the most detailed, authentic and gripping account of the bloody end of the Romanovs that I have ever read. I was staggered at how Helen Rappaport reconstructed and evoked such searingly vivid images; they are still with me now. Chilling and poignant, this is how history books should be written.” —Alison Weir, author of Henry VIII: The King and His Court
“The Last Days of the Romanovs is perhaps the most accurate depiction of the demise of Nicholas and Alexandra that I've read. Beautifully researched and written, Helen Rappaport’s newest book is notable not only for its balanced view of Russia’s last imperial family, but its realistic portrayal of a close-knit family in distress.” —Robert Alexander, bestselling author of The Romanov Bride
“That perfect but rare blend of history, sense of place, human tragedy, drama and atmosphere. . . . [The Last Days of the Romanovs] kept me up for 2 nights. . . . This book is going to be a bestseller . . . it will be the best read you will have had for ages.” —Susan Hill, author of The Various Haunts of Men and The Pure in Heart
“A rare combination of talents is Helen Rappaport; as an historian she exhibits a deep and sensitive insight into the past; and as a writer of English, her style is one of clarity and freshness.” —Colin Dexter, author of the Inspector Morse series
“Helen Rappaport has brought her subjects back to life with a sombre intensity. . . . The book is essentially a compassionate account of a close-knit, deeply devout and surprisingly ordinary family caught up in quite extraordinary circumstances. The atmosphere of dark menace that permeated the House of Special Purpose is very well captured as their Bolshevik captors gradually closed down their links with the outside world; sealing and whitewashing the windows and erecting a second perimeter fence. . . . I found this book a deeply touching anniversary tribute.” —The Independent (UK)
“A highly accessible account . . . rather than romanticizing the family members, the author explores their numerous character defects. Set against the rich political backdrop of the bloody birth of the revolution, the result is extraordinary and powerful.” —Oxford Times (UK)
“The Last Days of the Romanovs is well researched and has some excellent photographs . . . Rappaport successfully evokes the claustrophobic atmosphere within the house. . . . Nor does she spare the gruesome details of the massacre.” —Daily Telegraph (UK)
“An unromanticised telling of the family’s incarceration in the Ipatiev house and the circus that went on around them. [The Last Days of the Romanovs] brilliantly shows how history is never simple but always enthralling when written with this style.” —Bookseller (UK)
“An effective and engaging synthesis . . . with skill and imagination [Rappaport] juxtaposes the escalating chaos outside with the day-to-day tedium of the prisoners. . . . The result is an intriguing personal angle on what had seemed an exhausted subject.”—Sunday Times (UK)
“[Helen Rappaport] skilfully weaves together the grimly repetitive routine of the doomed family with the high drama engulfing the killers as they add the finishing touches to their terrible plan. Though some of the material is familiar, Rappaport's countdown format makes The Last Days of the Romanovs freshly compelling.” —New Statesman (UK)
“Helen Rappaport meticulously reconstructs the final days of the Romanovs in the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg and the unfolding political situation that sealed their fate. . . . Rappoport writes with verve, imagination and great empathy for her characters.”—The St. Petersburg Times
Most helpful customer reviews
99 of 103 people found the following review helpful.
A gritty, day-by-day narrative of 14 days leading to a massacre
By S. McGee
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.
57 of 60 people found the following review helpful.
Three and a half stars...
By Cynthia K. Robertson
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.
0 of 0 people found the following review helpful.
A classic Greek tragedy in the Urals
By Deejay
This was a fast paced, fact filled read that makes you feel that you're in the "House of Special Purpose" in Ekaterinburg. What happened to the Romanov family reads like a classic Greek tragedy; if only the Whites had arrived sooner, if only Lenin, Trotsky and Sverdlov weren't bent on revenge and murder, if only, if only, etc. The communists for 70 years called this despicable action an execution; an execution is a lawful punishment carried out as a sentence after a trial and guilty verdict. When and where was Nicholas' trial? And what sort of monsters shoot helpless, innocent women and children? This book is an historically accurate indictment of the Bolshevik killers.
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