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The Last Days Of The Romanovs: Tragedy At Ekaterinburg (2009)

by Helen Rappaport(Favorite Author)

4.01 of 5 Votes: 3

ISBN

0312379765 (ISBN13: 9780312379766)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

St. Martin's Press

review 1: Some of this book was a little TOO academic for my taste, but overall it was a sad insight into the last 14 days of the Romanovs' lives. I particularly liked the small little details the author unearthed, like when the cleaning women came in to scrub the family's floors in the Ipatiev House just days before their murders. The description of the actual murders was pretty brutal, but to be expected. Definitely a book for those interested in the Romanovs.
review 2: This powerful account of the Romanovs’ internment and regicide at “The House of Special Purpose” at Ekaterinburg, July 1918, is compelling, evocative, and horrifying. I suspect that Rappaport’s book on this ghoulish event is the most meticulously researched and accurate account of the Bolshev... moreik’s liquidation of Czar Nicholas II, Empress Alexandra, and their five children.She weaves the historical events in a storybook style that imbues life into the Royal Family. We look askance at the Czar who lacks moral courage, is fearful of innovation and change, and refuses to see the social and political problems engulfing Russia. We wonder at Empress Alexandra’s idiosyncratic brand of Victorian prudery, her impulsive sensuality and her hysterical passion, and her onerous addiction to narcotics: morphine and cocaine. We empathize with soft tears at the naive innocence of their daughters: Maria, Olga, Tatiana, and Anastasia. We sympathize with the hemophiliac, Tsarevich Alexy.We abhor the Bolsheviks’ regicide of the Royal Family as they perished in a fusillade of bullets, bayonets, and blood. We are appalled that the family’s servants also were included in this senseless butchery: their physician, Doctor Eugene Botkin; valet. Alexey Trupp; cook, Ivan Kharitanov; and maid Anya Demidova.Lastly, we recoil at the senseless killing of Tatiana’s Pekinese dog “Jimmy”.We damn Vladimir Lenin who ordered the regicide, Commissar Yakov Yurovsky, the leader of the assassination squad, and the Cheka guards who took unbridled, and unnatural pleasure in their perverse passion.I wonder if Rappaport had to detail the gruesome details of the regicide and the Cheka’s inept attempts to destroy the corpses.The Last Days of the Romanovs is a must read for the aficionados of the Russian Revolution. For the faint of heart, I would suggest an alternate book.You may also read St. Catherine’s Crown, historical fiction based on the regicide that begs the question, what if Anastasia survived? less

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