Review: Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

Ready?  Because this is momentous.

I DID IT!

With this book, I've completed 100 books in 2011.  Robert K. Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra was THE final book.  I am done, and for about five minutes, I was exhausted.  And then I went to the library and picked out another book.  Review on this page, wrap-up in the next entry.

At the turn of the 20th century, Russia was one of the few remaining autocratic nations in the world.  Its vast dominions had been governed for 300 years by the Romanov family.  The current tsar, or Emperor, was Nicholas II, a young, handsome, quiet man who feared confrontation and lived to make people happy.  His bride was the German princess Alix of Hesse, who later changed her name to Alexandra Fedorovna.  Theirs was a love match, not an arranged marriage, and together they had five children -- four elder daughters, and one young son and heir to the throne, Alexei.  Unbeknown to her, Alexandra carried in her the mutant gene that plagued the ruling houses of Europe -- her son Alexei was born with hemophilia, at the time a dangerous blood disease that constantly threatened his life.  In time, the silence surrounding Alexei's affliction, coupled with the unrest in their society, lead Russia full-tilt into revolution, and the Romanov family into tragedy.

Massie's book reads more like a novel than a non-fiction history, in most parts.  His chapters about politics, war, and Lenin are rather dry; those are difficult to get through at times.  But his writing is never better than when he is describing the day-to-day life and relationships of the Romanovs.  Like Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, the Romanovs are often lambasted in history as being antiquated, pretentious, spoiled and undisciplined, rulers who deserved the terrible ends that befell them because they did not heed the cries of their subjects, letting them starve instead.  But Massie illustrates the backgrounds that lead them to be this way, including the murder of Tsar Nicholas II's grandfather after he freed the serfs and instituted a Duma (parliament) and Nicholas' tutelage under Podobenostov, the student of autocracy.  You can't help but feel for the Romanovs during their plight.

Massie's "inspiration" (if you can call it that) for writing this book was the birth of his own son, who, like Alexei, was born with hemophilia.  His thesis in writing Nicholas and Alexandra was this: that although the country was already pre-inclined towards revolution and the death of the autocracy, the fate of the nation was sealed when Alexei was born with that small but critical gene mutation.  I won't explain his reasons for thinking so; you'll have to read the book yourself, I can't recommend it enough.  Anyone who is interested in Russian history or the lives of the Romanovs should read this book.  It is amazing.

Rating: *****