Alexandra feodorovna romanova biography books download
The Life and Tragedy of Alexandra Feodorovna Empress of Russia
She had no party behind her, and no regular advisers. She acted largely on impulse. She saw Russia from one angle only, and that from a romantic one. Her belief in Russia's great future and her natural desire to preserve her son's inheritance were her only motives. She was no born politician, but a religious woman, highly strung, who struggled through a maze of difficulties and opposition, the full extent of which she did not realise, to be a help to her husband."
That single quote, late into The Life and Tragedy of Alexandra Feodorovna: Empress of Russia is the single best sentence describing the last tsaritsa of Russia I have ever seen — included in a book that is a familiar portrait of a woman who perhaps loved her country too much.
Alexandra was the last reigning empress of Russia in the tumultuous times of the early 20th century, and history remembers her only as the tsar's wife and Rasputin's whore (or something of the sort).
But this is the first time I've read an account of the terrible end of the Romanov dynasty from someone who was actually there.
Sophie Buxhoeveden became one of Alexandra's closest ladies-in-waiting and friend in the war years, and she writes this memoir clearly as an insider, or at least one who wants to present the family's personal lives and not political lives. For the most part, the narrative was the same as any I've heard of the royal family's life in Russia.
Nicky and Alix were deeply in love, sometimes blinded together in love, but they also both had a deep love for Russia, despite Alix being a foreigner there in the beginning. But Buxhoeveden's insights on the family's relationships to each other were quite touching, especially when she explains Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia and how they interacted with each other and their parents.
(The chapter on OTMA is beautiful and heartbreaking all at once.)
But of course, Buxhoeveden says Alexei was the favorite of the empress, partly because he was a boy, the tsarevich and heir, but also because of his illness, the hemophilia that so crippled his childhood. And that triangle — the relationship between Alexei, Alexandra and Rasputin — is the most famous one of this time period.
Where other narratives portray Alexandra in a harsh light, as a woman who was too wrapped up in her love for her husband to think practically, or as a naive woman duped by her religion and enemies, Buxhoeveden's account is unsurprisingly more forgiving, and indeed, sympathetic toward her former friend and queen — but is also very fair, pointing out her criticisms of the empress and the mistakes which led to her downfall.
She says it's built on personal discussions with most people included in the story, which I do have to take with a grain of salt, but I certainly do not doubt that Alexandra was a caring, if naive, woman, and not the callous person so often presented in biographies of her.
Her children were the main focus of her life, yes, but they also helped her see the suffering of other people — especially because she saw herself as the Mother of Russia, just as the tsar is the Father of Russia.
Buxhoeveden spends a good deal of time talking about Alexandra before her children were both, and in their early years, how she would give her money to charity to the point of near-poverty. But Buxhoeveden elaborates brilliantly on the mystic monk, the staretz , Rasputin, who history also magnifies for his role in bring down the monarchy.
Alexandra feodorovna romanova biography books pdf
In this wonderfully nuanced book, Greg King explores one of the most complex and contraversial figures in Russian history. Alexandra Romanov was universally reviled by the Russian people and scorned by the Russian aristocracy. King does an excellent job of exposing the woman beneath the legend.In my own analysis, it's safe to say Rasputin was not solely responsible for their deaths, but like Buxhoeveden explains very well, he was highly influential in the public opinion of the monarchy — because he was so often associated with Alexandra. Buxhoeveden did not believe in Rasputin's power; she even notes that few people in the palace really did think he was a holy man.
But of course Alexandra believed in him devoutly, and Buxhoeveden expands on that in perhaps the most fascinating chapter of the book.
"To sum up the question: Rasputin was not the political power pulling the strings of a political game in which Ministers were his pawns ; nor the sectary and the dissolute "monk " that he was sometimes, mostly in novels, described as being.
But he certainly was not anything like the saint that the Empress imagined him to be."
And, at the same time, Buxhoeveden defends Alexandra and states the inevitable, with or without Rasputin's influence on Alexandra or any other forces beyond the empress' concern:
"Nothing that the Empress did, or did not do, brought about, or could have averted, the catastrophe of But had she had wiser advice during the critical years, she would have escaped the unjust accusation of influencing the politics of the country."
More than any other biography or historical book I've read about the end of the Romanov line, Buxhoeveden goes into the utmost detail about the very last day of the Romanov monarchy, that is, the day Nicholas II abdicated his throne.
I'd never heard what happened with Alexandra and the girls (although I did know they were ill) the day that dreaded news came to them, and this was an excellent first-hand account. Of course, I have history on my side to know how their problems were only to become infinitely worse, but even the pain and fear they felt on March 15, comes alive as one of the worst days of the Russian monarchy in this book.
Alexandra feodorovna romanova biography books free Gathered Radiance: The Life of Alexandra Romanov by Nectaria McLees. pages. Published: Genre: Biography. Publisher: Valaam Society of America. Languages: English. ISBN Hardcover: No hardcover edition available. ISBN Softcover: Print Status: out of print. description: An English-language edition of the biographical portion.
Alexandra Feodorovna is remembered in a rather limited way in Russian history, and 20th century history worldwide, but Buxhoeveden's book helps to expand upon that memory by explaining some fascinating, insightful and sometimes even moving anecdotes that she experienced firsthand — the entirety of World War I and the post-abdication era indicate her devotion to Alexandra and Alexandra's devotion to her family, even when they had no future at all.
Buxhoeveden was able to explain that tumultuous time in history in a fitting and honoring way, and, for as much as I've already read about the Romanov empire's decline, I feel The Life and Tragedy of Alexandra Feodorovna: Empress of Russia is a good addition to that knowledge.
One last (specific) note about the book: There was a section at the very end, when Buxhoeveden describes the family's travels to Ekaterinburg that took me by surprise:
"As a result of the instructions he got, the train was turned back towards Ekaterinburg, which had evidently been warned of their arrival.
When the train stopped outside the town, a large band of soldiers surrounded it. Yakovlev went to the local Soviet, and there, apparently, resigned his powers, and the Emperor and Empress were handed over to the Ural (Ekaterinburg) authorities."
That sounds like the Romanovs were never intended to go to Ekaterinburg, and thus, to their deaths.
Just imagine the other possibilities in this scenario: What if they had been taken to Moscow? What if they had stopped in Omsk instead? While I doubt history would have changed all that much, at least for the Romanovs, it's an ominous thought to realize their fate might have been avoided.
There's so much I didn't know about. Wow. What a powerful, informative book.