Seriously good fun... the Soviet march on Berlin, nightmarish drinking games at Stalin's countryhouse, the magnificence of the Bolshoi, interrogations, snow, sex and exile... lust adultery and romance. Eminently readable and strangely affecting." Sunday Telegraph For me personally, the topic of the Napoleonic Wars, the Crimean War, and the military action in Chechnya was my favorite in this book. The violence and struggle in modern day Chechnya has been ongoing since the 1780s and Russia's imperial expansion. This book made it hard not to sympathize with the Romanov family. Not that they weren't horrible rulers who left their country in shambles, because they most definitely were, and they were most definitely given several political outs along with way. But there were familial, cultural, and global factors beyond their control and, truly, they were also just people. When we got to the ending I knew we'd get to, I found myself tearing up while driving home (note to self:: don't do that).

It’s all very juicy but all the affairs and internal fighting kind of obscure for me a clear picture on how the Romanovs where so successful. They even harboured (delirious) plans to invade British India. but off course this is not really put into focus, no because: Alexander his wife harbouring a lesbian crush with one of her baronesses. A novel full of passion, conspiracy, hope, despair, suffering and redemption, it transcends boundaries of genre, being at once thriller and political drama, horror and romance. His ability to paint Stalin in such a way to make the reader quake with fire is matched by talent for creating truly heartbreaking characters: the children who find themselves at the centre of a conspiracy, the parents…. A gripping read and must surely be one of the best novels of 2013. ” NY Journal of Books In second grade, I discovered a passion for language. I can still remember the day my teacher, Miss Johnson, held up a horn-shaped basket filled with papier-mache pumpkins and asked the class to repeat the word "cornucopia." I said it again and again, tasted the word on my lips. I tested it on my ears. That afternoon, I skipped all the way home from school chanting, "Cornucopia! Cornucopia!" From then on, I really began listening to words—to the sounds they made, and the way they were used, and how they made me feel. I longed to put them together in ways that were beautiful, and yet told a story. It is General Kutuzov who evacuates then burns Moscow. The astonished Napoleon writes, “To burn their own cities! A demon has got into them. What a people! (p. 307) Napoleon fumbles around in the Kremlin for weeks. Kutuzov marches his much reduced army group to the west. Kutuzov let’s Napoleon go: he is determined not to pursue him with such reduced forces. Emperor Alexander is of a different mind. With the two additional armies he pursues Napoleon across the breath of Europe. At the last minute Napoleon turns away from Paris, a feint, while the Russians and their Prussian allies enter. Alexander’s sister writes to him: “The imagination can hardly take in the idea of Russians in Paris!“ (p. 314)It is worth nothing that while Montefiore occasionally indulges glib conclusions and gleefully dwells on the sordid aspects of the story, he is an esteemed historian who has written extensively about Russia and the Soviet Union. Still her state(wo)manship is eclipsed in this book by her serial affairs, with Potemkin and the people rising to power due to these sexual favours. Potemkin and Catherine even go as far as calling their respective lovers children (one being 21, while she was 51, so not unjustified, just a bit creepy if one sleeps with that person). Still the country did quite okay in the war apparently, with only deep losses and concessions following when the Communists come to power.

But everything I read and learned was written with a lot of leeway given towards the Romanovs. If I learned much of anything about the conditions that led to their deaths, I forgot it years ago; my memories of learning about the Romanovs go along the lines of "Once upon a time, there was a rich, royal, tragic family, and Bolsheviks killed them in a cellar. And Anastasia didn't escape." A breezy and concise historical account of Russia’s last imperial reign of Tsar Nicholas II, this non-fiction history book reads a lot like a novel. acceptance of most historical sources at face value rather than querying the interests and biases of those who wrote them Even after their deaths, nothing improved in Russia. People were still starving and freezing to death. People were suffering before and after the Romanov family was in power. Things probably could've gotten better if they weren't killed..but we will never know. Deci mi-a plăcut enorm scrierea captivantă, bine documentată, se observă că a fost efectuată o cercetare amplă prin redarea mărturiilor multor persoane.It is interesting to note that it was not until July 2007 that the remains of Alexei and of one of his sisters were finally found. (The remains of the other five family members had been uncovered in 1991.) Not just a thumpingly good read, but also essentially a story of human fragility and passions, albeit taking place under the intimidating shadow of a massive Stalinist portico." The National Alexander II, Nicholas’s son, took over amidst the debacle in Crimea. He was forced to accept a harsh settlement. Alexander had liberal leanings. He eased censorship and rules for universities and courts. He provided for local assemblies and reduced restrictions on Jews. Most significantly he freed the serfs in 1861. They could no longer be bought and sold. They could marry who they wanted and they could own land. Still they remained poor. Now Alexander couldn’t control the serfs through the nobles, only through his army. Two years later Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation. Alexander was an admirer of Lincoln and very upset when he was assassinated. The 1860’s brought the expansion of newspapers, the telegraph, railroads and radical new ideas. This was the decade Tolstoy wrote War and Peace and Dostoevsky Crime and Punishment. Alexander reversed his liberal course in 1863 to put down a Polish uprising. He deployed 300,000 Russian troops, executed hundreds, and deported 18,000 to Siberia. The love of Alexander’s life was not his first wife, the empress, but his mistress, Katya, with whom he had many children. He married her after the empress died to the chagrin of all around him. Montefiore quotes from their love letters which describes their extremely active sex life. Vying with affairs of state, Alexander’s primary preoccupation was having sex with Katya.