The title signals this is a dual biography. Yes, one set against the backdrop of the last decades of Imperial Russia and the Russian Revolution, but more intimate portrait of a couple than a book that deals with impersonal historical forces, though I think it gives enough of the context to make the destruction of the dynasty understandable. In the introduction Massie quoted Kerensky, the last Russian Prime Minister before the Bolsheviks took over, as saying, "Without Rasputin, there could have been no Lenin." Masse further notes that without Tsarevich Alexis' hemophilia, Rasputin would have never become a confident of a Tsar Nicholas and Empress Alexandra desperate to heal their child and heir. Massie himself became interested in the last Czar when his own son was diagnosed with hemophilia. He wrote this account in 1967 in the middle of the cold war, when Nicholas and Alexandria had been swallowed up in a memory hole. He brings Nicholas and Alexandra and their lavish lifestyle to life.
He starts by painting the vast landscape of Russia, and he paints it and the court with vivid colors in the way of a fine novelist but with the insights of historian. This is not a short book by any means, over 500 pages. But not one page drags. He writes of the couple with tremendous sympathy and Nicholas comes across as a decent man, a good husband and father who was a dreadful Tsar. By the end of Part Three that ends with his abdication, I'd come to the conclusion Nicholas is Exhibit A in the case against monarchy in anything but a purely ceremonial role. I've heard of a recent book that actually tries to argue for monarchy over republics. The author contends that a monarch has a personal stake in the fate of a country that cuts across politics and that a dynastic vision means a longview rather than short-term perspective. Well, they have a personal stake in keeping power, true, but the roll of the genetic dice doesn't often mean a competent leader, let alone a gifted one in a monarch. If the Romanovs' tale ended with them stripped of their throne and in exile say in England, I'd have said that was a deserved and satisfactory fate. But of course that's not how it ended. Massie makes you feel the full weight of the personal and national tragedy. Forty-five years have passed since its publication, and I'm sure with the end of Soviet Russia a goldmine of information about the Romanovs has opened up--but this classic account of two lives has stayed in print for decades for good reason.
