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Genre - Non Fiction
The fate of the Romanovs is well known. Many books have been written about the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II & his family – Tsaritsa Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexey & the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria & Anastasia – many of them full of wild speculation that some of the family survived the murders in 1918. Helen Rappaport’s new book focuses on the last two weeks of their lives, imprisoned in the Ipatiev House (known to their Bolshevik captors as the House of Special Purpose) in Ekaterinburg, a small town in the Urals. The book is based on extensive research among Russian sources not generally accessible to Western researchers & this is its great strength. Rappaport alternates between taking the reader inside the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Ipatiev House, as the family’s horizons are narrowed to the few rooms on the first floor, circling back through time to fill in background detail on the inept rule of the Tsar which led to the upheaval of revolution, & moving to Moscow, Petrograd & London as political forces influence the family’s fate. The final chapters are harrowing with the description of the family’s murder & the almost farcical ineptitude of the executioners. A compulsively readable book for anyone interested in the Romanovs or Russia in the 20th century.
---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters
Genre - Non Fiction
The fate of the Romanovs is well known. Many books have been written about the last Tsar of Russia, Nicholas II & his family – Tsaritsa Alexandra, Tsarevich Alexey & the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria & Anastasia – many of them full of wild speculation that some of the family survived the murders in 1918. Helen Rappaport’s new book focuses on the last two weeks of their lives, imprisoned in the Ipatiev House (known to their Bolshevik captors as the House of Special Purpose) in Ekaterinburg, a small town in the Urals. The book is based on extensive research among Russian sources not generally accessible to Western researchers & this is its great strength. Rappaport alternates between taking the reader inside the claustrophobic atmosphere of the Ipatiev House, as the family’s horizons are narrowed to the few rooms on the first floor, circling back through time to fill in background detail on the inept rule of the Tsar which led to the upheaval of revolution, & moving to Moscow, Petrograd & London as political forces influence the family’s fate. The final chapters are harrowing with the description of the family’s murder & the almost farcical ineptitude of the executioners. A compulsively readable book for anyone interested in the Romanovs or Russia in the 20th century.
---- Reviewed by Lyn, Headquarters
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