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A review by kmhst25
The Last Days of the Romanovs: Tragedy at Ekaterinburg by Helen Rappaport
challenging
dark
informative
sad
slow-paced
1.5
Shockingly biased and not well-researched.
The author’s disdain for Alexandra is palpable, calling her masculine, overbearing, and prudish; referring to her illnesses as “real or imagined”; and diagnosing her with one of Freud’s women’s disorders. All without objective proof (although how do you prove that a woman is “masculine” or has a Freudian disorder that is, in fact, make-believe?)
She also goes so far as to say that the Romanovs captivity must have been unbearable because it required four menstruating women—a group of people who are “subject to mood swings”—and one “likely menopausal” woman to share space. Apparently, to the author, women are crazy and hard to be around, whether menstruating or not. You would think that she’d never heard of a women’s dorm. It’s a lot.
But it’s also hard to take anything she says at face value, given her cavalier handling of the facts.
She reports (emphatically and repeatedly) that Maria was found in a “compromising position” with a guard and was iced out by her mother and sisters because of it. The only source for this little factoid is a man that the author herself admits was a drunk and an unreliable witness. Also, not someone who was actually a guard at the house at any point or in any real position to know.
There’s definitely some irony in the “Notes on Sources” section saying that the Romanovs’ legacy has been commercialized and romanticized beyond all reasonable fact, when it was written by the author of a slew of Romanov books capitalizing on the craze and sensationalizing the information. I get her point— certainly, no human family was as good and pure as this one is often represented as having been, but rectifying that situation would require the author to emphasize the harm this family did to the Russian people. Instead, she has written roughly a dozen books about them purposefully catering to popular gossip and intrigue, spreading falsehoods and her own opinions about their personalities.
The more I read history, the more I understand that history books tell you as much about their authors as they do about their subject; and I don’t think I care for Helen Rappaport.
The author’s disdain for Alexandra is palpable, calling her masculine, overbearing, and prudish; referring to her illnesses as “real or imagined”; and diagnosing her with one of Freud’s women’s disorders. All without objective proof (although how do you prove that a woman is “masculine” or has a Freudian disorder that is, in fact, make-believe?)
She also goes so far as to say that the Romanovs captivity must have been unbearable because it required four menstruating women—a group of people who are “subject to mood swings”—and one “likely menopausal” woman to share space. Apparently, to the author, women are crazy and hard to be around, whether menstruating or not. You would think that she’d never heard of a women’s dorm. It’s a lot.
But it’s also hard to take anything she says at face value, given her cavalier handling of the facts.
She reports (emphatically and repeatedly) that Maria was found in a “compromising position” with a guard and was iced out by her mother and sisters because of it. The only source for this little factoid is a man that the author herself admits was a drunk and an unreliable witness. Also, not someone who was actually a guard at the house at any point or in any real position to know.
There’s definitely some irony in the “Notes on Sources” section saying that the Romanovs’ legacy has been commercialized and romanticized beyond all reasonable fact, when it was written by the author of a slew of Romanov books capitalizing on the craze and sensationalizing the information. I get her point— certainly, no human family was as good and pure as this one is often represented as having been, but rectifying that situation would require the author to emphasize the harm this family did to the Russian people. Instead, she has written roughly a dozen books about them purposefully catering to popular gossip and intrigue, spreading falsehoods and her own opinions about their personalities.
The more I read history, the more I understand that history books tell you as much about their authors as they do about their subject; and I don’t think I care for Helen Rappaport.