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skydye7's review against another edition
5.0
Gritty, captivating, and absolutely difficult to put down! Radzinsky does a wonderful job knitting together the story of the final Romanov family with historical accuracy and just enough conspiracy theory to leave the reader wondering. Five stars.
cerealmaterial's review against another edition
1.0
Bad. Really bad. Don't think I'll ever read Historical Fiction again. Recommended to me by my coworker Jeff (bless his heart).
helenajcassels's review against another edition
dark
informative
mysterious
reflective
tense
slow-paced
2.0
birdkeeperklink's review against another edition
1.0
While providing a tidbit here and there that I wasn't aware of, this book was distasteful to me. It reads like a sensationalist journal rather than a historian's account. The Massie book on Nicholas II was much more concise and professional, and much less hysterical--Massie was not looking for strange patterns and mysticisms, as Radzinsky seems to have been. Skip this one, as it is not really worth your time, and offers very, very little new on a subject that has been written on by many others.
hannah_em's review against another edition
5.0
Great book. Easy to read and kept a very interesting story line.
rhubarb1608's review against another edition
5.0
Back when I was a real person, I lived in Bloomington, Indiana, and I used to trawl all the town's bookstores looking for books about Nicholas, with whom I became fascinated during the summer of 2008 and outright obsessed with over the course of 2009. Caveat Emptor was a great place to go because I always found heaps of Russian books there; a George R.R. Martin lookalike manned the counter, and the entire place was floor to ceiling with books, an entire maze of bookshelves placed as close together as possible. Although R.R. Martin's doppelganger tended to price these things rather high, I scored plenty of great stuff including The File on the Tsar and Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra, both completely stuffed with newspaper clippings and magazine articles about the Romanovs.
Tucked inside The File on the Tsar, between the endpaper and the back cover, I found a three-page folded article from a 1992 issue of People magazine, a review of this book. Well, of course I immediately set out to get it from the library, but it was still awhile before I got around to reading it. I was not disappointed. Not only is it one of the best books I’ve ever read about Nicholas II, but it's the only one I'm aware of actually written by a Russian.
Э́двард Станисла́вович Радзи́нский was born in Moscow on September 23, 1936. It seems obvious he was deeply involved in the theater throughout his life, the son and son-in-law of playwrights and husband of an actress, and he is himself a playwright as well. However, I hazard to say he is mainly known as a very popular author of history. A historian by training, he has written some 40 books, including biographies of famous Russians that include a level of research English-speaking writers have not been able to accomplish. (I have also read his The Rasputin File, and it was an eye-opener!) His theatrical background helps him produce dramatic and highly-readable material, and his Russian nativity gives him the ability to find and incorporate rare historical documents.
I can tell you that most biographies of Nicholas II, being written by the fascinated English and skeptical Americans, simply repeat one another and a few haphazard translations of mid-20th-century sources. Not so with Mr. Radzinsky. His bibliography is a mass of Cyrillic primary sources.
By a huge margin, The Last Tsar is the fairest portrayal of Nicholas II I have ever read, and fairness is the most important factor when it comes to Romanov biographies. Also: something that is very difficult for Americans or "westerners" to grasp, but Russia is part of the East. They simply don't think according to the same pattern we do. American biographers can look at this action of Nicholas', at this response of the people, at this situation that the government had to deal with, and they connect A to B and conclude C like any logical western thinker would.
But in the old colloquialism, in the east, you can't get thar from here. A doesn't wind up at C by way of B. Maybe B is unrelated, and C turns out to be the result of D. Romanov biographies are full of gross assumptions by westerners that this behavior was perceived as this; that action was a reaction to that; but Radzinsky applies his Russian brain to the source documentation and sets out the most likely state of affairs. He becomes our bridge, explaining Russian cause and effect for us.
In short, this biography has everything going for it -- Russian primary sources, Russian interpretation of Russian behaviors, and dramatic prose that brings it all to life. The book itself, translated from Russian into English (lest I belabor the obvious), is occasionally quirky in its word choice, but on the whole, this book is as exciting and readable as any novel with the extra spice of the fact that it's all true. Despite the fact that it came out in the early 90s, it continues to hold up as the best and most complete Nicholas II biography available today.
Thanks, whoever left that People book review in the copy of Nicholas and Alexandra I bought. My life would not be complete without this biographical masterpiece.
Tucked inside The File on the Tsar, between the endpaper and the back cover, I found a three-page folded article from a 1992 issue of People magazine, a review of this book. Well, of course I immediately set out to get it from the library, but it was still awhile before I got around to reading it. I was not disappointed. Not only is it one of the best books I’ve ever read about Nicholas II, but it's the only one I'm aware of actually written by a Russian.
Э́двард Станисла́вович Радзи́нский was born in Moscow on September 23, 1936. It seems obvious he was deeply involved in the theater throughout his life, the son and son-in-law of playwrights and husband of an actress, and he is himself a playwright as well. However, I hazard to say he is mainly known as a very popular author of history. A historian by training, he has written some 40 books, including biographies of famous Russians that include a level of research English-speaking writers have not been able to accomplish. (I have also read his The Rasputin File, and it was an eye-opener!) His theatrical background helps him produce dramatic and highly-readable material, and his Russian nativity gives him the ability to find and incorporate rare historical documents.
I can tell you that most biographies of Nicholas II, being written by the fascinated English and skeptical Americans, simply repeat one another and a few haphazard translations of mid-20th-century sources. Not so with Mr. Radzinsky. His bibliography is a mass of Cyrillic primary sources.
By a huge margin, The Last Tsar is the fairest portrayal of Nicholas II I have ever read, and fairness is the most important factor when it comes to Romanov biographies. Also: something that is very difficult for Americans or "westerners" to grasp, but Russia is part of the East. They simply don't think according to the same pattern we do. American biographers can look at this action of Nicholas', at this response of the people, at this situation that the government had to deal with, and they connect A to B and conclude C like any logical western thinker would.
But in the old colloquialism, in the east, you can't get thar from here. A doesn't wind up at C by way of B. Maybe B is unrelated, and C turns out to be the result of D. Romanov biographies are full of gross assumptions by westerners that this behavior was perceived as this; that action was a reaction to that; but Radzinsky applies his Russian brain to the source documentation and sets out the most likely state of affairs. He becomes our bridge, explaining Russian cause and effect for us.
In short, this biography has everything going for it -- Russian primary sources, Russian interpretation of Russian behaviors, and dramatic prose that brings it all to life. The book itself, translated from Russian into English (lest I belabor the obvious), is occasionally quirky in its word choice, but on the whole, this book is as exciting and readable as any novel with the extra spice of the fact that it's all true. Despite the fact that it came out in the early 90s, it continues to hold up as the best and most complete Nicholas II biography available today.
Thanks, whoever left that People book review in the copy of Nicholas and Alexandra I bought. My life would not be complete without this biographical masterpiece.
sschaeber's review against another edition
5.0
Exceptionally well-researched, well-written, if a little out of date at this point. Still worth a read!
imalwayswrite's review against another edition
2.0
What made this book interesting is that Radzinsky uses tons of primary resources, specifically Nicholas II’s diaries, which the tsar started keeping at age 14 up until he was executed at age 50. Radzinsky quotes letters, other people’s diaries and memoirs, and official reports; he uses interviews he conducted himself from witnesses, descendants and an unnamed “guest.” What I didn’t like so much is all the speculating and emoting that he does. There’s a lot of material that is repeated and though the first part moves pretty quickly, as soon as Nicholas abdicates, the rest really drags. If you aren’t well versed in the history of the Revolution, things get confusing. It assumes you know the difference between a Chekist and a Bolshevik, which I didn’t and still don’t. After reading some of the letters Radzinsky quotes that Nicholas and Alexandra wrote to each other during World War I, I couldn’t help thinking: “OMG. These people are running the country???” lol