Location: Home > History > Europe > Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs

Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs

Author: Helen Rappaport
Publisher: Hutchinson
Category: Book

List Price: ~~Ł18.99~~
Buy New: Ł10.17
You Save: Ł8.82 (46%)

New (19) Used (2) Collectible (1) from Ł10.17

Rating: 5.0 out of 5 stars

7 reviews
Sales Rank: 263

Media: Hardcover
Pages: 272
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6 x 1.2

ISBN: 0091921155
EAN: 9780091921156
ASIN: 0091921155

Publication Date: June 5, 2008
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Condition: Brand new book sourced directly from the publisher. Delivery in 3-5 days. Customer service 7 days per week

Similar Items:

•	The Coburg Conspiracy: Royal Plots and Manoeuvres
•	The Suspicions of Mr Whicher: Or the Murder at Road Hill House
•	Faberge's Eggs: The Extraordinary Story of the Masterpieces That Outlived an Empire
•	Romanov Bride, the
•	The Romanovs: Ruling Russia 1613-1917

Customer Reviews: Read 2 more reviews...

5 out of 5 stars

Ekaterinburg July 19, 2008
Using her extensive research of diaries, letters and eyewitness accounts, Helen Rappaport draws together the strands of this story to write an utterly compelling account of the last days of the Imperial Family.

Set against the backdrop of war, revolution, and factional fighting amongst the Bolsheviks she explains how, after the Tsar's abdication, the Imperial family finally come to be imprisoned in the Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg, chillingly referred to as The House of Special Purpose. The house which has been turned into a prison, shut off from the outside world by a wooden palisade.

Helen really conveys the feeling of doom as the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and their daughter Maria enter the house on April 30th 1918, the other children following later when Alexy, the Tsarevich, has recovered from an attack of haemophilia. She describes how, for the next few weeks, the family and their servants endure the stifling heat, the oppressive atmosphere and lack of privacy of their apartment, cut off from the outside world, the windows sealed shut and whitewashed over.

She draws such intimate and detailed portraits of Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, that the family come vividly to life as they cope with their confinement. The Tsar resigned, Alexandra in constant pain, comforted by her daughters and her strong orthodox faith. The four Grand Duchesses, as they learn to wash their clothes, scrub floors and bake bread. Serious Olga, practical Tatiana, caring Maria and mischievous Anastasia, and Alexy, their brother, frail and sickly, playing soldiers with the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev.

The arrival of a new commandant Yakov Yurovsky on July 4th heralds a much harsher regime for the prisoners. The sense of foreboding intensifies in the house. Yurovsky's purpose is to arrange and carry out the efficient and secret liquidation of the Romanov family. The tension builds as the night chosen for the murders arrives and Yurovsky's meticulous plans begin to unravel. The subsequent horrific and botched killings in the cellar are gut wrenching and deeply shocking. The bungled efforts of the killers to dispose of the bodies, if not so tragic could be considered almost farcical.

Leaving aside the politics of the Tsar's disastrous reign, Helen has concentrated on this story of the Imperial family who were brutally murdered with the consent of Moscow, an act which was to be repeated all over Russia in the following years resulting in the death of millions of people. A terror outstripping any of the atrocities perpetrated during the Romanov reign.

Helen Rappaport has written a very powerful and moving book, which I recommend unreservedly.

5 out of 5 stars

Ms. Rappaport possesses a remarkable ability to breathe life into people and places long gone July 2, 2008
I am in absolute awe of Ms. Rappaport's research and writing abilities, particularly her keen descriptiveness and her uncanny ability to "see" and report on circumstances, people, a house, a city -and a mood- as vividly as if this all happened in front of her eyes yesterday, instead of almost a century ago. Though describing gloom and fear and the sense of "suffocation," as well as other subjects that I'd rather not dwell on, the book has enthralled me.

Despite my decades of reading almost everything written in English or French on this subject, I found Ms. Rappaport's perspective on the times and the individual characters to be surprisingly enlightening. Ms. Rappaport has successfully synthesized an enormous amount of information from both well-known and rarer sources. With it, she conjures a sometimes agonizingly realistic picture complete with atmosphere, an overwhelming sense of tension, and visual descriptions that propel the reader backward in time to a city, a house and circumstances that long afterwards linger in the mind as vividly and hauntingly as an unshakable personal memory.

5 out of 5 stars

A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family June 30, 2008
13 out of 14 found this review helpful

I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.

All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!

5 out of 5 stars

The lilies in the forest. June 23, 2008
1 out of 1 found this review helpful

Most readers of Helen Rappaport's gripping account of the last weeks of the lives of the Russian Imperial family will already know what happened. The great strength of this work is in the fleshing out of the characters from the first-hand accounts that Helen Rappaport has sourced, especially the Herman Bernstein archive in America. The Grand Duchesses especially become real girls with their different habits and characteristics well delineated. It is almost unbearable to read, but more unbearable not to, as the tick-tock of the narrative bears us inexorably closer to July 17th, the date of their brutal assassination.

5 out of 5 stars

Fresh perspective, at last June 22, 2008
5 out of 5 found this review helpful

I took a risk with this book -- rather than wait months for the American edition, I pre-ordered it sight unseen and coughed up an extra 30% in shipping to the USA.

Short version: thumbs up. Had it read in an afternoon.

Long version: Rappaport's even-handed perspective and tight focus make Ekaterinburg a worthwhile read, even for those like me with linear feet of shelf space already devoted to dozens of Romanov titles. Rappaport's approach neither sanctifies nor demonizes the imperial family, and that in itself is refreshing. Drawing on seldom-accessed Russian sources, she gives a vivid sense of the tense political climate in Ekaterinburg, as well as the stifling mood in the Ipatiev house during the Romanovs' captivity that's lacking in other accounts. A significant amount of discussion concerns the politics behind the execution, but as I have not generally paid much attention to the Lenin vs. Ural Soviet debate, I can't judge whether the information on that topic is new.

To be perfectly frank, this volume is not a smorgasboard of new facts and evidence; it's too late in the game to realistically expect that from any author. Yet the tight chronological focus filled in some cracks that other accounts tend to gloss over, and I found a satisfying number of new tidbits regarding the Romanovs themselves -- the name of Aleksei's cat, for example, and further insight into the empress's physical/mental condition -- to feast upon.

For my money, the combination of new domestic tidbits and the author's assessment of the Romanovs' personalities and family dynamic more than made up for the cost of international postage. Those more interested in the political side of the Romanovs' exile and execution should find plenty to ponder as well. In essence, I'm glad I didn't wait.