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A review by rhubarb1608
The Last Tsar the Life and Death of Nicholas II by Эдвард Радзинский, Edvard Radzinsky
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dramatic and highly-readable material, and his Russian nativity gives him the ability to find and incorporate rare historical documents.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.