The Romanovs: 1613-1918

Simon Sebag Montefiore is one of the preeminent narrative historians of our time. His history of Jerusalem and his history of the 'Court' of Stalin the Red Tsar are books informed by vast knowledge of his subjects and meticulous research. Yet, all of his books are written with verve and keen insight into the motives of the principal players. This book on the Romanovs is somewhat different in that Montefiore really has written an actual biography of a whole family. The events and people impinging on their lives from the outside world and foreign autocrats and, later, foreign republicans (small 'r') are duly presented. But, make no mistake: this is a very personal story of a family.Starting with the first Romanov tsar, Michael I, the author follows the ups and downs of the family until the bitter end in the Ipatiev house in Ekaterinburg. It's all here: intrigue, murder, betrayal, foolishness, some nobility, and sex -- lots of sex. Erotomania has, of course, been a feature of many a dynasty but seriously, the Romanovs, to put it mildly, just couldn't get enough. Catherine the Great, according to Montefiore, always had to be in love. Alexander II exchanged letters with his mistress that are so steamy that I felt like a voyeur reading them. And, unfortunately, the reader is 'treated' to one too many of the sexy billets-doux. Even the uxorious Nicholas II and his dim-witted tsarina Alexandra got cutesy by naming their private parts in their correspondence. A little of that went a long way.This is not to say that this book is all sex: I referred to it simply because, if nothing else, it brought these august people to life and made real human beings out of them. What is overwhelming is the utter foreigness of this clan to western eyes. There is Peter the Great killing his heir in a rage, the empress Anna humiliating one of her most eminent courtiers (from an old noble family) by making him wear a chicken outfit and sitting in a nest making clucking noises in front of the court. After church he would be joined by Anna's circus of freaks also dressed 'au poulet' and they would all cluck away. Hard to imagine this happening in the courts of Louis XV and George II, let alone the dismal Prussian court. The chapter on Paul is just as fascinating but his end rises to the level of Grand Guignol.Montefiore's assessment of Alexander I is well-reasoned and rescues him from his inevitable disparagement from writers enthralled by Alexander's glittery contemporary Napoleon. When Montefiore gets to Alexander II, the reader is at last given a portrait of overall the most attractive of all the Romanov rulers. He tried hard to reform his sclerotic country but he was frustrated by inertia and the dead hand of custom at every turn. Even his reforms were not enough for the revolutionaries and nihilists that hunted him down like an animal. His end was sad and his successors Alexander III and Nicholas II were singularly unqualified to build on his work.There is no need to rehash the dismal drama of the reign of Nicholas II, but Montefiore incisively demonstrates just how unqualified Nicholas was for the job of tsar. I already knew this, but the author's insights are fresh. What is really eye-popping is his trashing of Alexandra. Far from being the sympathetic character traditionally presented in history books, she was incredibly stupid, overbearing, and vicious. Her relationship with Rasputin is closely examined by the author. Rasputin and Alexandra might not have been the proximate cause of the collapse of the dynasty, but they definitely knocked out some key props of the throne. Apropos of Rasputin, Montefiore's account of his demise is fascinating, at least, and at most sensational as he posits that Yusupov had help from the British secret service. Well, it was new to me.The bottom line: this book reads like a novel and is one of the most fascinating books I have read in a while. Other readers might wish for more on the structure of the Russian government, monetary policy, more military history, and any number of things. However, this book is presented as an intimate account of an entire family, warts and all. In Montefiore's hands, the Romanovs have found their Suetonius, only with deeper scholarship. 4.5 stars.

If the Romanovs did anything good for Russia and its people, Montefiore finds very little of it. They were brutal mass-murderers and imperialists who believed peasants were their rightful property and Jews and Poles were vermin. Czar Nicholas II, the last of the Romanovs, ordered thousands of his subjects massacred, and then complained that just ruined the day for himself and his family.Montefiore writes:> ... this is a world where obscure strangers suddenly claim to be dead monarchs reborn, brides are poisoned, fathers torture their sons to death, sons kill fathers, wives murder husbands, a holy man, poisoned and shot, arises, apparently, from the dead, barbers and peasants ascend to supremacy, giants and freaks are collected, dwarfs are tossed, beheaded heads kissed, tongues torn out, flesh knouted off bodies, rectums impaled, children slaughtered; here are fashion-mad nymphomaniacal empresses, lesbian ménages à trois, and an emperor who wrote the most erotic correspondence ever written by a head of state. Yet this is also the empire built by flinty conquistadors and brilliant statesmen that conquered Siberia and Ukraine, took Berlin and Paris, and produced Pushkin, Tolstoy, Tchaikovsky and Dostoevsky; a civilization of towering culture and exquisite beauty.Montefiore finds two great emperors -- Peter the Great and Catherine the Great -- but even they spent their time building empires and monuments to themselves, rather than making the people better. Peter the Great was a scientist, engineer, soldier and general; he enjoyed traveling to Europe and enlisting as a craftsman to learn to make things by hand and he applied those skills to his military adventures. He ordered an ex-lover executed for infanticide – murdering her own babies.> On 14 March 1719, Mary appeared gorgeous on the scaffold in a white silk dress with black ribbons, but she expected a pardon, particularly when Peter mounted the gibbet. He kissed her but then said quietly: “I can’t violate the law to save your life. Endure your punishment courageously and address your prayers to God with a heart full of faith.” She fainted, and he nodded at the executioner, who brought down his sword. Peter lifted up the beautiful head and began to lecture the crowd on anatomy, pointing out the sliced vertebrae, open windpipe and dripping arteries, before kissing the bloody lips and dropping the head.He kept the head on display afterward.I found myself despising the Romanovs so much that I eagerly looked forward to the ending, where the entire family would be slaughtered in a basement by the Communists. The last Czar, Nicholas the II, wasn't the worst of the bunch, but he was the most incompetent, and he was a narcissist too, convinced that the people would never rise up against him because he was their czar, chosen by God, and they loved him – even while the people were, in fact, rising up against him. But when the finale came, it was unsatisfying, because several of the victims were children, because the murder was particularly savage, and conducted without trial, and well after Nicholas had already abdicated the throne and shown no interest in taking it back. The czars were terrible rulers, but the Communists were worse.Montefiore notes that the spirit of the czars lives on today, "... the new autocracies in Russia and China have much in common with that of the tsars, run by tiny, opaque cliques, amassing vast wealth, while linked together through hierarchical client–patron relationships, all at the mercy of the whims of the ruler." The same could be said of the US now, for the last three years. Before reading "The Romanovs," I wondered how people as manifestly incompetent as Trump and his supporters could seize and hold power. What we see in the Romanovs is that some people are great at seizing power, but incompetent at everything else. And once they've seized power, other people will find it to their advantage to keep things as they are. Trump, like the Romanovs, will go down quickly when he goes -- it'll be days, not months or years. But I don't know whether Trump will go down in 2020, or whether he and his cronies have put in place an autocracy that will last a generation or more.As for the book itself: The author is clearly passionate and expert about his subject matter, but it's a confusing book, filled with lots of Russian names (duh) that are hard to keep track of. Montefiore gets lost in detail, particularly in telling about wars and battles and internal Kremlin conflicts. It's an excellent book, but I wish maybe there were less of it.

Es un libro extraordinario resultado de una investigación profunda y juiciosa divinamente redactado que lo lleva a uno al deleite de la lectura

Excelente abordagem. Uma escrita exemplar.

Es un libro de cultura general que todos deben leer. Es grueso, pero vale la pena el tiempo. Compra recomendada.

Kaum etwas hat den russischen Volkscharakter so sehr geprägt wie die Tatarenherrschaft und das Zarentum.Heraufgestiegen aus dem Nebel der Überlieferungen, umrankt von Sagen und Mythen taucht das Zarentum in der Geschichte Russlands auf und gibt ihm sein Gepräge. Wer kennt nicht, und wenn nur vom Hörensagen, Zar Ivan der Schreckliche, Zar Peter der Große, Zarin Katharina die Große oder vielleicht sogar Zarin Elisabeth? Wer hat nicht schon vom dramatischen Ende der letzten Zarenfamilie vernommen, untergegangen im Kugelhagel der bolschewistischen Revolution?Simon Sebag Montefiore reißt die Geschichte des Zarentums aus dem Nebel des Mythischen, seziert seine Heraufkunft; die Wahl der Familie Romanov als künftiges Herrschergeschlecht und die vielfältigen familiären Bande der russischen Adelsschicht mit jener der einst übermachtigen Tataren; deren nationale Rückbesinnung mit der Kul-Sharif Moschee in Kazan derzeit seine eigene Symbolik entfaltet und die dem Wort Napoleons, "grattez le Russe et vous trouverez le Tartare" Wahrheitsgehalt zugesteht. Montefiore entfernt den Mythos, das Wundersame, das Unerklärliche durch die Ergebnisse leidenschaftsloser Forschung, aber er erniedrigt seinen Gegenstand damit nicht. Im Gegenteil, ohne jegliche Mythisierung wirken die Leistungen der Romanov umso erstaunlicher. Die Geschichte dieser Familie, die bis 1917 so untrennbar mit der Geschichte Russlands verwoben ist, ist eine Geschichte voller Intrigen, Morden, Lust, Frivolität, Frömmigkeit, einem unstillbaren Expansionsdrang, innerer Zerrissenheit und dem Bedürfnis zu aller Zeit und in jeder Lage Stärke zu demonstrieren. Heute wie zu allen Zeiten ist der Herrscher Russlands dazu bestimmt ein starker Mann (oder eine starke Frau) zu sein. Es ist egal, welchem Geschlecht der Herrscher angehört; die Russen lassen sich gerne von Frauen beherrschen, aber sie müssen stark sein. Die sadomasochistische Liebesaffäre der Russen als Volk mit der Autokratie findet ihre Wurzeln in dem Bedürfnis nach einheitlicher Führung und unangefochtener Herrschaft, von der Zeit der Waräger bis in die Zeit Putins hinein, aber den ultimative Maßstab bilden nach wie vor die Romanov. Die Herrschaft der Roten Zaren bolschewistischer Prägung ist nur ein kurzer Augenblick im Verhältnis zu den Jahrhunderten in denen die Romanov es vermochten, den Russen das zu geben, was sie von ihren Herrschern verlangen. Der Moment der Schwäche, der sich in der Herrschaft Zar Nikolaus II. offenbarte, wurde aber sofort und unerbittlich bestraft. Russische Herrscher sterben im Amt - auf die eine oder andere Weise.All dies herausgearbeitet zu haben und ganz en passant eine Familienbiographie geschrieben und einen anderen Blickwinkel auf die Geschichte Russlands geworfen zu haben, ist die herausragende Leistung des Autors. Die Sprache fesselt und auch wenn das Werk teilweise Längen hat, so machen der Wissenszuwachs und das Mehr an Verständnis für die russische Seele all dies wett.Erzählte Geschichte. Vorbehaltlos 5*.

Thoroughly researched, engaging writing style of a fascinating historical period, filled with intrigue, perverted family dynamics, politics,sex and violence..everything needed for a engrossing read!