The Fate of the Romanovs

by Greg King and Penny Wilson

Book Overview

Abundant, newly discovered sources shatter long-held beliefs The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 revealed, among many other things, a hidden wealth of archival documents relating to the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0471727970
• ISBN13: 9780471727972
• Release Date: October 2005
• Publisher: Trade Paper Press
• Length: 672 Pages
• Weight: 2.10 lbs.
• Dimensions: 1.7" x 6.1" x 9.2"

Customer Reviews

A voluminous tome and well-researched book

Having completed King and Wilson's aformentioned historical analysis of the fate of the Romanovs, it is without a doubt a must-read for anyone interested in the collapse of the Russian Empire and what brought about that fall. This account is largely unbiased, multifocused on personal, historical, and emotional factors that shaped the downfall of the Romanov Empire, and provide the reader with a plethora of information that shapes the context of time in which the events occur. Although a bit treacly at points, the book is vastly entertaining and does not require its reader to slog through the pages. For lovers of history, this is an excellent read for setting background on the political structure of late 19th and early 20th century Europe and the dynamics that brought about 2 World Wars. Indeed, a thoroughly researched account and well written!

NEW & OLD EVIDENCE...LOTS OF INFO

Overall, I really think that this book is a good read. It is mostly interesting and presents new evidence with notes to the sources. As far as I am aware, this is the most recent book published about the Romanovs, which makes it up to date, even with the 1998 burial of the Romanov remains. I have read other Romanov books, and I really think that this is the most detailed book on EVRYTHING from their lives (althought more detail is known and could have been presented) to the investigations, which ALOT of detail is written about. The book doesn't focus to much on the Anna Anderson case (which I think is nice), but it includes things here and there. The book starts with "The Ruin of an Empire" (which is the lives of the family while in control of Russia, and the family life..ex:when all the children are born) and ends with the investigations and burial. SO much information that isn't even new (I just haven't read it before and I have read LOTS of Romanov books) is also presented. If you have any intrest in the Imperial family of Russia then I would recommend this book for you.Other GREAT Romanov books: Anastsia's Album, The Last Tsar, Nicholas & Alexandra, and The Romanovs: The Final Chapter

A landmark book

This is the most important book on the Romanovs to appear since Edward Radzinsky's The Last Tsar. (William Clarke's 1994 Lost Fortune Of the Tsar is also a crucial text.)The black/white reviewer opinions expressed here are because it rightly strips away the romanticism that has enveloped the family since Robert Massie's superb, but skewed, Nicholas and Alexandra...the book which kicked off the modern Romanov boom. And of course, that doesn't go down well with many deluded Romanov fanatics. However, the historical truth is far more interesting than the usual mauve mist of platitudes. King and Wilson allow us to see this family as they really were. Highlighting their all-too-human inadequacies - and deep they were - doesn't make the story any less compelling. Both N & A were monumentally unsuited for their roles: he was charming, but weak and extraordinarily foolish; she was freezingly devoid of charm or humor, fatally interfering, and a religious hysteric.(Small wonder she appeals to the same mentality that moons over that charming, but manipulative basketcase, Diana Princess of Wales.) The characters and actions of N & A drove the majority of their contemporaries who knew them well to utter and complete dispair - including the extended Romanov family, the majority of whom by 1917 were ready to endorse - if they weren't already actively campaigning- for their removal from the throne. Their fate was awful, but N & A were never innocent victims. As the authors state, this book will hardly be the last word on the subject, but it is a landmark work of outstanding research that will be consistently cited by future authors, and ia a must-read for anyone interested in the subject.

The Truth Hurts

Long at odds with what I assumed to be the authors' approach to the Romanovs, and not 100% convinced of some assumptions made in "The Fate of the Romanovs," I would be completely remiss not to stand up and salute them for the remarkable level research and thoughtfulness that went into their work. King and Wilson have striven to take a fresh hard look beneath the overwhelming layers of well-established myth, erroneous assumptions and outright misinformation surrounding the end of the Romanovs. And it ain't pretty. There is nothing to admire about Nicholas, and Alexandra was not a wonderful mother, especially to her daughters. Their imprisonment was not in some important respects what we've always been told it was. The personal repercussions of the Romanov's downfall on several of the family members and their retainers turns out to be surprisingly different from what we had assumed previously, whereas the murder is revealed to have been every bit as gut-wrenching as most of us imagined. Indeed, all through the book, previously unknown or overlooked details are brought to light and introduced into the context, often masterfully disabusing one of long-held erroneous notions.Whether I agree or not with every path they took along the way to the book's completion, I applaud Mr. King and Ms. Wilson for telling the truth, as they see it, to the best of their remarkable abilities. They have indisputably raised the benchmark on scholarly treatment of this subject, and those of us who disagree with this or that point of theirs will have to do an enormous amount of research in order to properly challenge the authors' painstakingly-earned credibility.

A Comprehensive Summation and Refutation

The Fate of the Romanovs is a highly detailed, heavily footnoted book which thoroughly investigates the final months of the last Russian Imperial Family. This is a subject which has been covered many times, but never so thoroughly as have Greg King and Penny Wilson, who document almost every step Nicholas, Alexandra, their children and faithful servants took from Tsarskoe Seloe to Ekaterinburg. In the process, many romantic and political cobwebs have been swept away from the story of the last Tsar, his family and associates, and their fates.There is no doubt that Nicholas II was a good and loving husband and father, but King and Wilson also depict his frustrating fatalism and passivity (and anti-Semitism which was extraordinary even by the standards of his time). Similarly, Alexandra was a devoted mother but possessive to the point of neurosis with her husband and children. The five children were normal adolescents, not angels. Most interestingly, the loyal servants who died with the family are here given biographies and personalities for the first time, as are the Ekaterinburg guards, who were not brutes but young men and boys who developed warm (sometimes romantic) feelings for their captives and wept over their bodies. (Some even committed suicide in remorse.) King and Wilson describe how the legend of the saintly family and their brutal imprisonment developed out of political and religious considerations well after the events took place, and document the real story for the first time. They do a particularly good job of exposing the anti-Semitic intentions of many of the first investigations of the murders, which were apparently undertaken not so much as to solve the mystery as to blame the whole thing on the Communists and Jews.The period leading up to the massacre is carefully reconstructed. King and Wilson absolve Lenin of directly ordering the murders and maintain the decision was made by a panicky Ural Soviet as an army which would have rescued the Tsar closed in on Ekaterinburg. The massacre itself is described in every gory detail, as is the long drawn out and bumbling process through which the bodies were removed and buried.Here King and Wilson would like to find a way to revive the Anastasia controversy, but even though Anastasia and Alexis are undeniably missing from their family's grave, they can find no evidence that anyone was able to escape. The mystery of the two missing bodies will have to remain a mystery until someone finally finds their burial site in that forest outside Ekaterinburg.In the final chapters King and Wilson provide some updated information about the rediscovery of the bodies in the 1970s and early 1990s, with some indications that the Soviet and later Russian governments were heavily involved in making sure the investigations came out without too many embarrassing details being revealed. More recent material on the DNA analysis of the bones is also included, but there's nothing that alters the certain id