The fate of the Romanovs, Russia’s last Imperial family, was one of the most enduring mysteries of the 20th century. There have been as many books written about the forced abdication of Tsar Nicholas II and the eventual imprisonment and murder of him and his family as there have been conspiracy theories formulated as to what happened to the Romanov wealth or whether Anastasia or any of the other children survived the events of 1918. Yet even though time and DNA testing seems to have proved that all of the Romanovs did indeed meet their deaths in Ekaterinberg, theirs is still a fascinating if tragic story that continues to live in the popular consciousness.
Despite the wealth of information that exists about the Russian Revolution and the final days of the Romanovs, Helen Rappaport’s Ekaterinburg is a must read book for anyone interested in this period of history.
The Tragedy of the Romanovs
In the face of increasing political pressure and public unrest, Tsar Nicholas II abdicated on March 15th 1917, leaving himself and his wife Alexandra and their five children at the mercy of the revolutionary government.
As the counterrevolutionary White movement gained strength and full-scale civil war broke out in the summer of 1918, the Romanovs were removed from Tobolsk where they had been exiled by the Kerensky government to Ipatiev House (known to the Bolsheviks as the House of Special Purpose) in Ekaterinburg. The family spent several months imprisoned in increasingly harsh conditions in Ekaterinberg while they held out hope for rescue and the Bolsheviks decided what to do with them.
Unfortunately rescue never came. Early in the morning of 17th July 1918, Nicholas, Alexandra, their children, their doctor and three servants were woken and taken to a basement room in Ipatiev House and shot.
The Story of Ekaterinburg
Ekaterinburg is really a twofold triumph for Helen Rappaport.
She has succeeded in unearthing and chronicling facts, sometimes as simple as the name of Alexei’s cat for example, that are glossed over or entirely overlooked in other accounts but that provide invaluable insight into the human aspect of the Romanov tragedy. Although the family’s imprisonment and ultimate fate is well known, the tight chronology and domestic details of their lives that Rappaport has unearthed illuminate the actual experience, not always as bad as would be expected, of their time as captives. Rappaport really brings to life the claustrophobic and oppressive nature of life in the House of Special Purpose.
Although she concentrates on the experiences of the Romanovs themselves, Rappaport never loses sight of the political context of their imprisonment and the wider implications of their fate. Tension mounts quickly as Rappaport recounts the last fourteen days of the Romanovs’ lives, all the while bringing the politics of revolution and world war closer towards the family and their tragic end.
On top of the impressive level of research that Helen Rappaport has conducted in order to produce Ekaterinburg, she also has an excellent and engaging writing style and succeeds in maintaining the tension and mood throughout. There’s no escape from the prevailing sense of doom that haunts the Romanovs in Ekaterinburg and, equally, Rappaport spares no punches when detailing the gruesome twenty or so minutes of the murders themselves. Gritty and compelling, the praises of Ekaterinburg cannot be sung loudly enough.
Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs by Helen Rappaport
ISBN: 978-0091921156, Hutchinson, 2008, £18.99, pp 272
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