Superb book on Romanov Children

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Barbara
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Superb book on Romanov Children

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Russian History expert Helen Rappaport does the best job I have seen in recounting the era leading up to
the Imperial tragedy of July 17, 1918. The English author gathered the best selection of material from many Romanov aficionados as well as consulting records all over Europe. Thus the result is a refreshingly interesting account, unmarred by all sorts of intrusive political jabs, such as found in a new Young Adult biography of the Romanovs by a woman named Constance Fleming. The latter book, more representative of the usual fare from American authors with a relentless agenda, is heavily laced with criticism and even probably fabricated incidents to mar the legacy of Czar Nicholas II in conformity with the prevailing view during his time of Marxist revolutionaries and many so-called democrats living in the West ever since.
Juxtaposed with such deflating material, Helen Rappaport's book stands out all the more as enjoyable to read. One isn't bombarded with charts of the average income of a peasant in Russia in the early 1900s, or breakdowns of occupations in early 20th century Russia as in Fleming's angry diatribe against the Russian monarchy, marketed as "history" for American young adults.

Instead, in "The Romanov Sisters", one can relax and read the facts about each member of the family of the Czar, culled from diaries, memoirs written at the time and in succeeding decades by eyewitnesses. These reminiscences are shrewdly woven together to present a clear picture of the hitherto-little known Grand Duchesses. We have all heard about them : we know their names well from hearing them at Liturgy. But who were they, actually ? How did they differ from each other in character ? How did they change as they grew up ? Why is it we have this idea of them as a monolithic block, referred to even by the 4 themselves as "OTMA" after the first initials of their names, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia. And why did even much of the world see them the same way, as a single unit, rather than as Grand Duchesses with differing personalities and talents ?
The girls were invariably dressed in matching white lace dresses for public appearances. That repetitive style accentuated the lack of individuality of each Grand Duchess.
The 4 were mentioned in the American and British press of the time. But usually superficially, in the context of speculation about which European Prince would become engaged to Grand Duchess Olga, the eldest. [As it turns out, it seems to me that it is a sad twist of fate that Olga was not married abroad before the Russian Revolution descended. She might otherwise have survived and left an entire line surviving all this time.]

The author devotes much time to each of the "Big Pair"'s - the older 2 Grand Duchesses - crushes on young officers whom they met on the Imperial yacht [she helpfully spells it throughout as "Shtandart" so we know how it was really pronounced. I never realized that it was anything other than how the name looked, like the word Standard]. Or in the military hospital where the Big Pair worked during World War I. That part got slightly boring, because we know that none of these dashing young officers were ever going to marry their Princesses ; thus it seems almost a waste of time, both on the girls' part and ours to read about ! Teenagers are teenagers, everywhere, so of course it was natural that these painfully sheltered girls would have overly obsessed about the very few men in their own age group with whom they were allowed to chatter. And apparently flirt too much, the author does well to gently inject. She asks why Empress Alexandra, normally so strict, was remiss in not seeing how emotionally involved the Elder Pair had become with a succession of young officers during these years.

We also see how much their mother "infantilized" them -- the author's unpleasant but realistic term -- referring to them even when they were well grown as "my girlies".

Thus we can understand why they weren't able to assert themselves more in any way and remained "OTMA" all the way to their horrific martyrdoms.

[To Be Continued]

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Barbara
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Re: Superb book on Romanov Children

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Continued :

In making these points about the perhaps warped upbringing of the 4 Grand Duchesses, the author is not ever criticizing.
She is merely letting us, the readers, have a glimpse into the girl's real world. It would not be believable if they had had every last thing in their lives to perfection. So, we can sympathize with them and see where some of the mistakes made led to undesirable results. For example, it was clear the girls needed their mother. But Empress Alexandra was always sick ; the book makes that more clear than I had ever realized. She not able to be present to oversee or comfort her growing daughters. Instead, she relied on the exchange of notes back and forth. We have to imagine what effect that prolonged distance could have on [perhaps] lonely girls. The 4 expressed their sorrow in loving notes at not being able to see their their mother.

One aspect mentioned but not as much as we would like is the religiosity of the girls. The author states approvingly that the girls had icons and crosses on the table near their metal camp-cots [a little bit harsh regime for girls, seems to me !]. Helen Rappaport points out that it would be normal for them to have had the usual clutter / knicknacks.

Beyond the Icons, though, we hear of the family attending Church. But really not much more. There is an offhand mention of St Nicholas as the patron of the Imperial children, I think in a letter written by Alexandra. Other than these vignettes, we obtain little knowledge of their specific religious interests. For example, which icons were present at the cot-side tables ? Maybe no one knows by this time. But we would like to gain a window into their thoughts by hearing some mention of Saints in whom they trusted particularly. Or any - again - individual ideas. From the surviving diaries and letters, we know that they had firm faith. But what they said could have been written by Anglicans or Lutherans during that era. Like "God is watching over us ; God is in control : He allowed such things to happen."
This is just my reaction ; I could be wrong, not having read for a long time any other historical accounts of the Romanov Family.

What I detect as missing is expression of devotion to the Mother of God. I don't remember any of that in the passages quoted in this biography. Perhaps the 5 children were not encouraged by their Imperial parents to venerate Her ? Was Alexandra as a former stubborn Lutheran who refused to convert to Orthodoxy at first, resistant to the idea of praying to the Heavenly Queen ?? That's a question worth looking into.

[To Be Continued]

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Barbara
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Re: Superb book on Romanov Children

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What does get analyzed is the influence of Rasputin, and possible views of the 4 Grand Duchesses toward him. For example, Olga made a statement after his murder which did not sound as though she regretted that he was gone from Russia.
Up til then, readers have the impression that the children were all favorable toward the Siberian folk healer.

Here, too, the author is circumspect. Instead of dragging us through all the usual sordid tales, she acknowledges his lurid lifestyle, but does not dwell on it or give unwelcome details. She highlights instead what for me was a new point : his intense opposition to the Czar's allowing Russia to go into the fray of World War I. Rasputin made dire predictions warning against it. We know from hindsight how accurate those statements were. But, surely this could have been common sense, not a special prophetic power. That is one place where his advice should have been followed ! If only Russia had sent able diplomats to negotiate with Kaiser Wilhelm's government, the Revolution would never have come to pass. At least not at that era.
And many millions of Russian soldiers would have lived.

As for the Grand Duchesses' role as nurses during the War, this era is documented extensively by the author.
She points out via the opinions of some at the time that the young women should not have been allowed to be so close
to traumatic scenes of operations performed, let alone participating in these, as Grand Duchess Tatiana did with particular skill. I agreed with that assessment. Giving them exposure to pain and the reality of war would be right. But not day after day, year after year toiling in the sick wards. And there, the too close proximity to a few young men patients with whom each of the Big Pair developed close emotional bonds. Not healthy for women who would never be permitted to marry such, unless the laws were changed. The author speculates that this may have happened some day if all foreign royal prospects were exhausted and Nicholas decided to let his daughters marry their own countrymen for love rather than foreign policy considerations. It was an original idea.

What was unusual was the amount of energy which their mother threw into the assembling of hospital trains and equipment.
Formerly so ill she couldn't walk, and seemed at times near death with "Number 3 Heart condition", meaning the worst level, she was now full of vitality and seemed an excellent organizer. After the end of her role, she immediately lapsed back into illness. Interesting insight.

[To Be Continued]

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Barbara
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Re: Superb book on Romanov Children

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If we are trying to understand the 4 Grand Duchesses, I think the distance from their mother as well as the lack of experience of life in the world is the most important. Why did they not seem to exude independent identities [ at least, until this book appeared ! ] One could almost say that they were too sequestered in the wrong ways but thrown into a boiling cauldron without a second thought.

That is, when the family is on their sad trip to Tobolsk, the author makes a point that they never were able to travel much. For the first time, the family as a unit was seeing the vast domains beyond the known areas of St Petersburg, Moscow, Sarov [where the Imperial family attended the canonization of St Seraphim, of course], Borodino [where they went to commemorate the 100th anniversary of the 1812 battle fought with the troops of Napoleon I ], and Kiev.

To me, visiting various areas of the far-flung Russian Empire should have been a top priority. The Grand Duchesses would have widened their horizons, and learned much that only seeing other peoples, cultures and ways of life can teach.
It was likely due to the difficult illness of the Tsarevitch that this might have been thought to be impossible.
After all, though, he was taken on every yachting holiday, and to the hunting lodge at Spala in today's Poland [that name always gives me the shivers]. So he could have been left at home under the best care, or the 4 Grand Duchesses taken along with their father if their mother felt consigned to stay with him around the clock.
This lack of curiosity about the vastly diverse peoples ruled by the Tsar provides a glimpse into why there was not support from the rest of the Empire to keep the Tsar in power. No one had ever seen him in person, except for his tour as a Grand Duke, and probably the peoples didn't feel that he cared about them. So why should they lift a finger to fight the Bolsheviks ?
Just a thought.

Instead of gaining this healthy education about life, the elder girls were stuck in a military hospital witnessing drastic surgeries, with primitive anesthetics by today's standards. One can imagine how that too in-depth exposure would have traumatized the sheltered girls. They would never have dared let on, nor is their evidence of complaining about anything but their officer-crushes' reassignments back to their Regiments in the diaries or letters of the girls.
I am only surmising this myself ; the author did not convey that they were perhaps victims of what is popularly called "Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder" today. A lot of claimants to that syndrome probably had less cause than these Grand Duchesses !

[To Be Continued]

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Barbara
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Re: Superb book on Romanov Children

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Of course, what was to follow in their lives would qualify for the most severe form of "PTSD".

Suddenly having to do the work of maids and menial servants during their stay at the Governer's Mansion in Tobolsk, the dirt, the incredible cold, the isolation from friends or supporters, lingering illnesses endured in miserable conditions....

That was like a palace in comparison with confinement by Bolshevik guards in the chillingly-named "house of special purpose" in Ekaterinburg.

Let's go back to the weeks and months after the Tsar abdicated his throne for himself and for his son. Helen Rappaport describes his days under palace arrest as spent mainly in chopping wood in the Alexander Park. I marveled at how energetic he was in this endeavor. After all, he wasn't a heavyweight fighter ! Fairly slight and not that strong. Then I read of a woman who was going through a severe shock from a con-artist's manipulations. She described how to get herself to go out and DO something, she went out in the snow and -- chopped wood ! She chopped huge boughs, she said, and methodically cut those into tiny slices of wood. Only to focus her thoughts on something besides the "running tape" that wouldn't stop in her mind about the evil tricks a guy had played on her, ruining her life - at least, so she felt.

We can imagine, then, if just one romantic episode gone wrong damaged so heavily one individual, how much more pressure would the now essentially deposed Tsar have felt to "stop those tapes running", analzying everything, trying to come to terms with the gigantic fiasco of the loss of the monarchy which few, at least from the Imperial Family and Court, could have dreamed would happen. While stockpiling firewood for the cold months may have been the outward reason, even necessity, I would suggest that it was a therapeutic activity to keep him from obsessing over the tumultuous events of the past years.

It gives us a keen insight into how very traumatized the Tsar was, despite his much-documented outward display of British -style equanimity.

[ To Be Continued ]

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Re: Superb book on Romanov Children

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While looking for a different topic, I found this book listed on Amazon.

The Diary of Olga Romanov: Royal Witness to the Russian Revolution

Apparently this received fairly strong ovations. Typical was the first review :

"Great for Teachers working on the subject share with your students
By Edward T. Winn on November 24, 2013

The book is the first of its kind, because it consists of the authentic diary entries of one of the daughters of the last Russian Tsar. In addition, it is not an indiscriminate repetitive collection of diary entries, but a collection of what looks like carefully chosen representative ones. Some of the entries have been published in Russian (never in English as far as I know), but many of the diary entries I am seeing here for the first time… As a bonus, the book does not only contain Olga’s diaries, but also some other valuable primary sources, including never before published (in English) diary entries of Tsar Nicholas II himself, as well as the memoirs of Alexander Kerensky, and the events seen from their points of view. These, and others, make this book an important resource for WWI and Russian revolution scholars and history buffs too. If you are looking for primary source material of this period, this book is definitely for you. "

I am not sure I would want to read anything about Kerensky, a bad figure in my estimation. Though not quite a villain, he was far too weak, thus of course was quickly overthrown by the more ruthless Bolsheviks.
Too, he prevaricated so much about what to do with the Romanovs that he lost for them the chance to escape to Britain or elsewhere.

For anyone who wants to get to know one of the Grand Duchesses, Olga, better via her own diaries, this book sounds quite useful. I hadn't seen it, though it's been around since December 2013.

The number of enthusiastic commentators reveals how keen the fascination is beyond Orthodox Church circles in the 4 Romanov daughters.

I see also a few more looks at the Grand Duchesses published in recent years. If anyone has read them, or this diary of Olga, please let us know what you think !

Archimandrit Nilos
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Re: Superb book on Romanov Children

Post by Archimandrit Nilos »

Be very cautious with the name of expert in Russian history "Rappaport"

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