The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II
by Edvard Radzinsky
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Book Summary Information
Author: Edvard RadzinskyEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 1993-06-15
ISBN: 0385469624
Number of pages: 496
Publisher: Anchor
Book Reviews of The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II
Book Review: Our Bitter, Bitter Revolution
Summary: 5 Stars
A man is sitting at a book-covered table in the Central State Archive of the October (1917) Revolution in Moscow. The surviving diaries of the last imperial family of Russia are there, unclassified at last. Reading them, his thoughts carrying him back and forth in time, the man is moved when he finds pressed flowers in the journals of the tsar's daughters: "Souvenirs of a destroyed life".
Edvard Radzinsky is that haunted man, sitting at a table strewn with memories of a broken dynasty. "The Last Tsar" is the product of his research and his sadness. A playwright, Raszinsky is well-qualified to explore the human depths of the lives of Tsar Nicholas II, his family, and the others who were part of their doomed world.
The book gained a great deal of publicity when it was first released here for its sensational assertion that two of the family may have escaped execution on that terrible night in 1918. And this work of popular history merits the attention. This book is likely to become the definitive work on the last years of Tsar Nicholas II and his family.
Rarely is a work of history so beautifully written, so thoroughly researched, and so permeated with emotion and insight. A great debt is owed to the translator for her lyrical and poetic voice while retaining a sense of historical authority.
Radzinsky's attitudes and feelings are juxtaposed with those of the two main characters of the story-- Tsar Nicholas and his queen, Alexandra. The inclusion of the author's feelings is unorthodox in a historical work however, in this case, it's a success and it offers a perspective that is both personal and realistic.
The tone of the book is conversational rather than scholarly. It is not difficult to imagine Radzinsky weeping as he sits at the table covered with diaries, though he does not say he did. Certainly, the depth and honesty of his feelings are so evident that we find it difficult to hold back tears ourselves as the tragedy of the Romanov family unfolds.
Radzinsky has a deep respect for the dead Tsar and his wife, but he clearly loves those children. They are the classic innocence, doomed by the destruction of their grand and insulated world.
In the early 90s, exhumation of what is assumed to be the family's grave revealed only nine skeletons. Although the accepted number of victims has always been put at eleven. Even more recently, two bodies were found nearby to the execution site and burial site that some experts believe to be the missing bodies.
The book and the forensic examination raise again the persistant belief that not only the Princess Anastasia, but also the Tsar Evitch Alexi, heir to the Russian throne may have survived the execution. However, these most recent exhumations near the main burial pit appear to show that neither Alexi nor Anastasia survived.
One of the participants in the execution later wrote that Alexi and his four sisters remained alive after the shooting had stopped.
"This had amazed the Commandant", he wrote, "since we had aimed straight for the heart. It was also surprising that the bullets from the revolvers bounced off for some reason and ricocheted, jumping around the room like hail."
That night, the children were wearing clothing into which the family diamonds had been sewn. Seeing that the bullets had not done its jobs, the killers decided to finish off the children with bayonets. A strong, although essentially circumstantial case, is presented that Alexi and Anastasia may, in fact, have survived.
This conclusion appears to have been recently overturned by the finding of the two bodies near the main burial site.
"The Last Tsar" was written as the Soviet Union, the author's homeland itself, was collapsing. The two Russian Revolutions, those of 1917 and 1989, are often intertwined in the book. In the lonely archives and libraries of a dying country, Radzinsky fell into a no-man's land of historical whirlwinds where huge and incomprehensible became understandable. He offers insights into the character of Russian history where, ". . . great and terrible events. . . are usually due to someone's stupidity or laziness," and to the apparently cyclical nature of history.
"Oh, our bitter, bitter revolution," he writes.
This is a book about processes. The tragedy of a family, the drama of a world turned upside down and the mechanics of research and writing are among the subjects.
Radzinsky's superb use of diaries and letters, his simple straightforward arguments and his penetrating thought-provoking style combined to make a very entertaining and convincing book.
Summary of The Last Tsar: The Life and Death of Nicholas II
Russian playwright and historian Radzinsky mines sources never before available to create a fascinating portrait of the monarch, and a minute-by-minute account of his terrifying last days. Updated For The Paperback Edition.Biographies & Memoirs Books
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