Product Description

The last Tsaritsa of Russia, Alexandra Feodorovna, was murdered with her family on the night of 16-17 July 1918 by agents acting on behalf of the revolutionary Bolshevik government. The story of the demise of the Romanov dynasty has been recounted many times. This book - the recently declassified 1918 diary of Alexandra - aims to provide something no other account could do: a glimpse of the Tsaritsa's thoughts and activities from 1 January 1918 until the night of her death. As the granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Alexandra wrote in English, though her native language was German and she became fluent in Russian after her marriage to Nicholas. The 1918 diary takes us into her private world, revealing the care she lavished on her children during this period of revolutionary turmoil, how she felt towards her husband, Tsar Nicholas, and what she imagined about the profound struggle - between past and present, old and new worlds, the sacred and the profane - then occurring over the destiny of Russia. The diary reveals that even in her most intimate reflections, she remained the representative of a great system of belief that had prevailed for hundreds of years in Russia and that she and Nicholas hoped to perpetuate. We see in detail the daily confrontation between this system of belief and the reality of the modern world that had, in every sense, broken free of her and Nicholas's control. The Tsaritsa's diary is accompanied by an introduction by Robert Massie. A biographical portrait of Alexandra, the introduction places her in the historical context of the revolution, her marriage to Nicholas, and the events that encompassed her, her family, and her nation.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #1507913 in Books
• Published on: 1997-11-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 285 pages

Customer Reviews

Fascinating but only for the true fanatic
As many reviewers have said, the very monotony of Aleksandra's last diary gives it an eerie significance. However, beyond that, there is little to recommend it. Entries, spaced one to a page, mostly consist of a single brief paragraph, and the content is boring-- notes on the weather, her health, the health of her children. "Sat for 10. m[inutes] on the balkony [sic]." It is a very short book, and a very quick read. Only for the true Romanov fanatic (of which I am one), I'm afraid. Aleksandra's letters and the letters & diaries of the others who shared her captivity are far more interesting.

Chilling monotony
Tsaritsa Alexandra had no idea, of course, that this was her last diary or that anyone besides herself would ever read it. Since we know the ultimate fate of this unhappy woman the banality and monotony of the last few months of her life have an unintentional sense of tragedy. How sad, for example, that she took the time to note the birthdays of various royal connections, people she would never see again and who in some cases (such as George V of England) had abandoned her and her family to their fate. A brief but compulsive read

A Book as Grand as the woman who wrote it
I don't want to hear about how brief or boring this book appears to be to others, this is the final diary of one of the most grandest Empresses of the most grandest Empire of modern history, that significance alone makes it utterly compulsive, of all the characters that appears in this diary, no-one only the reader knows what is going to happen, it is spooky, eerie, the disposal of the Imperial Family was meant to usher in a new age, democratic, compassionate and humanitarian and yet this family, whose only crime was to be 'born' were treated in anything but such a way