Ekaterinburg: The Last Days of the Romanovs [Paperback]

I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by all means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.

All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!

I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.

All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!

Using her extensive research of diaries, letters and eyewitness accounts, Helen Rappaport draws together the strands of this story to write an utterly compelling account of the last days of the Imperial Family.

Set against the backdrop of war, revolution, and factional fighting amongst the Bolsheviks she explains how, after the Tsar's abdication, the Imperial family finally come to be imprisoned in the Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg, chillingly referred to as The House of Special Purpose. The house which has been turned into a prison, shut off from the outside world by a wooden palisade.

Helen really conveys the feeling of doom as the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and their daughter Maria enter the house on April 30th 1918, the other children following later when Alexy, the Tsarevich, has recovered from an attack of haemophilia. She describes how, for the next few weeks, the family and their servants endure the stifling heat, the oppressive atmosphere and lack of privacy of their apartment, cut off from the outside world, the windows sealed shut and whitewashed over.

She draws such intimate and detailed portraits of Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, that the family come vividly to life as they cope with their confinement. The Tsar resigned, Alexandra in constant pain, comforted by her daughters and her strong orthodox faith. The four Grand Duchesses, as they learn to wash their clothes, scrub floors and bake bread. Serious Olga, practical Tatiana, caring Maria and mischievous Anastasia, and Alexy, their brother, frail and sickly, playing soldiers with the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev.

The arrival of a new commandant Yakov Yurovsky on July 4th heralds a much harsher regime for the prisoners. The sense of foreboding intensifies in the house. Yurovsky's purpose is to arrange and carry out the efficient and secret liquidation of the Romanov family. The tension builds as the night chosen for the murders arrives and Yurovsky's meticulous plans begin to unravel. The subsequent horrific and botched killings in the cellar are gut wrenching and deeply shocking. The bungled efforts of the killers to dispose of the bodies, if not so tragic could be considered almost farcical.

Leaving aside the politics of the Tsar's disastrous reign, Helen has concentrated on this story of the Imperial family who were brutally murdered with the consent of Moscow, an act which was to be repeated all over Russia in the following years resulting in the death of millions of people. A terror outstripping any of the atrocities perpetrated during the Romanov reign.

Helen Rappaport has written a very powerful and moving book, which I recommend unreservedly.