Nicholas and Alexandra by Robert K. Massie

I've meant to read this for years, and I'm not sure why. But I finally got around to starting it when we went on our trip and I had to download a bunch of books to the Kindle to read instead of bringing hard copies of books (best reason to have a Kindle--while traveling!). It had been a long time since I'd added this book to my to-read list, so I didn't remember that it was actually a biography of the last Tsar and Tsarina of Russia and not just a novel about them--which was kind of what I expected. So when I saw that it was 583 pages of solid biography, I started to get a little bit bogged down in it, but I powered through, and I'm really glad I did. I thought this book was so incredibly fascinating. I learned so much about Russia's history, recent and long-ago, and I learned so much about these two people specifically. (I have always loved all the Russian books I've read by Tolstoy and Dostoyevsky--they have such a distinct flavor to them and I felt like I was reading one of those again while reading about life in St. Petersburg and Moscow). I didn't know very much about the Romanovs other than the Anastasia supposed mystery, but I do know a lot now. And I love them. They sound like they were amazingly nice, good-hearted, hard-working people who legitimately thought they were doing what was best for Russia. They were wholly devoted to their family and viewed taking care of Russia as their reason for living. I'm sure there is more to the story and that Massie isn't a completely impartial viewer of the situation, because it seems like there wasn't much negative he had to say about the couple other than their mistakes that they made in governing the country.

Because they made some incredible mistakes to bring along their own downfall and that of Imperial Russia. Tsar Nicholas was terrible at listening to advice from people at crucial moments, and was determined not to take away from the power of the monarchy until it was far too late and his kingdom had been completely taken away from him altogether. And, dare I say this? He was too accommodating to his wife, even when she had completely gone off the rails of normal beliefs and behavior--in her faith in Rasputin. There was almost two years during WWI, just before they were deposed, when Nicholas was off at the front leading the troops (from their headquarters) and Alexandra was basically taking over the running of the government from home, and she uprooted almost the entire set of ministers from the Cabinet based solely on who liked Rasputin and who didn't. Massie quotes tons and tons of her letters to Nicholas about removing such-and-such minister pretty much because he doesn't like Rasputin, and putting in so-and-so who does, no matter how good the minister was at his job and how inexperienced or useless someone was who she wanted to put in. She sounded seriously insane. She had no criteria other than someone liking Rasputin, because she had such faith in him as being basically the embodiment of good and of godliness (even though he was anything but!) so that anyone who didn't like him must be bad. And Nicholas never did much to check her or try to take any other control over the situation, and those few years pretty much drove the government to ruin. It sounded unbelievable.

Massie basically makes the case that their son Alexis's hemophilia drove Alexandra to complete despair and complete dependence on Rasputin's unexplained ability to heal her son's drastic bleeding episodes, and it was this decade-long relationship with Rasputin that seriously undermined the people's opinion of her and pretty much led to the Revolution (at least partly). Basically, hemophilia --> Rasputin --> Revolution. If Alexis had been a healthy boy, the whole history of Russia in the twentieth century might have been different. I found the many what-ifs that Massie entertained here and there so fascinating and interesting.

There were some other mind-blowing facts about older Russian history as well. I loved the story of how the first Romanov tsar came into power: he was just the nephew of Ivan the Terrible's wife who died and drove Ivan insane with depression, and he was the only person the group could agree on to elect as Tsar. So this random sixteen-year-old kid was elected as tsar in the 1500s, and then his family were the tsars for the next four hundred years. I just thought that was hilarious and so insane!

Overall, this was such an interesting read. I am toying with the idea of reading Massie's biography Catherine the Great next because I enjoyed this so much, and I would love to learn more about Russian history. But maybe I'll wait a little longer between big heavy biographies...