Alexandra: The Last Tsarina FROM OUR EDITORS
Aristocrats blamed Alexandra, the last tsarina, for the fall of the Romanovs, but few of her contemporaries fully understood the wife of Nicholas II or comprehended her real part in the history of his regime. In the gifted hands of Catherine the Great biographer Carolly Erickson, Alexandra comes alive as a haunted, introspective woman who is constantly searching for wise counsel and constantly misled.
FROM THE PUBLISHER
"Just as Edvard Radzinsky wrote the ultimate account of Nicholas II in The Last Tsar and Robert Massie memorably described the imperial marriage in Nicholas and Alexandra, Carolly Erickson has created an indelible portrait of Alexandra, the woman blamed by her contemporaries for the downfall of the Romanovs." "Under Erickson's scrutiny the full dimensions of the empress's singular psychology are laid bare: her childhood bereavement, her long struggle to marry the deeply flawed man she loved, Nicholas, the anguish of her pathological shyness, her painful, bruising conflicts with her in-laws, her increasing eccentricities and loss of self as she became more and more preoccupied with matters of faith, and her growing dependence on a series of occult mentors, the most notorious of whom was Rasputin." Alexandra's thorny personal story unfolds against the backdrop of Russian history in the last decades before the Revolution of 1917, a time of opulent palaces, bejeweled aristocrats, and lavish wealth - and also of anarchist bombs and pervasive violence and fear. While the rich of St. Petersburg were carried away in a frenzy of fin-de-siecle merrymaking, the empress, feeling the burden of having to be her husband's emotional mainstay, sought answers to Russia's overwhelming problems through mediums and charlatans - and attempted to find healing for her hemophiliac son through the mysterious wonder-working powers of Rasputin.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
The wife of Nicholas III, the tsar who was overthrown in 1917 by the Russian Revolution, Alexandra has long been viewed by Russian historians as narrow-minded, reactionary and hysterical. But in this entertaining, if not completely convincing, account, Erickson (Bloody Mary) paints a sympathetic portrait of the German-born empress. Erickson humanizes the granddaughter of Britain's Queen Victoria by detailing the romance between the two young cousins, "Alix" and "Nicky." One of the book's strengths is its emphasis on the private life of the court. Erickson also draws attention to the difficulties the husband and wife faced as they struggled to produce a male heir, first having three daughters before they sired the hemophiliac Alexis. "Unless help came from a divine source," Erickson writes, "he would surely succumb to one of the terrible attacks of bleeding." Though the rest of the story is familiar Alexis's illness led the family to an increasing fascination with the occult and the spiritual healer Rasputin this accomplished historical biographer tells it with style and suspense. At times, Erickson sacrifices historical accuracy for drama, e.g., when she attempts to elicit sympathy by saying that Alexandra looked middle-aged at 33, although that was not rare for a mother of four in pre-revolutionary Russia. But small glitches aside, Erickson's popular biography will satisfy readers seeking the scoop on Russia's last empress. (Sept.) Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Library Journal
Erickson is the author of many popular historical biographies, only one of which (Great Catherine) dealt with Russia. When the German princess Alexandra of Hesse-Darmstadt (1872-1918) married the heir to the Russian throne in 1894, she assumed a role for which she was not suited, by temperament or by upbringing, as well as an obligation to support her clearly weaker husband. The author depicts her subject as rejected from the start by the Russian court and oblivious to the political situation in her adopted country, with a strong desire for a "normal," loving family life. As a result, Alexandra gradually withdrew into the mystic tradition of Russian Orthodoxy, and her illnesses isolated her ever further from the troubles abroad in Russia. The book quotes extensively from Alexandra's letters and from memoirs left by her friends and contemporaries. Though less expansive in its coverage of the era than Robert K. Massie's Nicolas and Alexandra (1967), this work makes a complex time accessible to general readers and is most suitable for public libraries. [Previewed in Prepub Alert, LJ 5/15/01.] Marcia L. Sprules, Council on Foreign Relations Lib., New York Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information.
Kirkus Reviews
Russia's last empress receives compassionate but by no means uncritical treatment from biographer Erickson (Josephine: A Life of the Empress, 1999, etc.). Alexandra's term for herself-"Pechvogel," or "bird of ill omen"-seems an all-too-apt description for her star-crossed life. A German-born granddaughter of Queen Victoria of Britain, she lost her mother Alice, the Grand Duchess of Hesse, when she was only six. After her marriage to Czar Nicholas of Russia, she found herself beset by ill health and viperish tongues. Debilitating migraines, sciatica, and shortness of breath resulted from several exhausting pregnancies. Her depression was deepened by her interfering mother-in-law, the dowager empress; by a sophisticated, French-speaking court that regarded her as an interloper; and by a populace who called her the "German Whore" and scorned her inability to produce a healthy male heir. That last failure so upset Alexandra (or "Alix," as Erickson calls her familiarly) that she came to rely increasingly on Father Gregory, the infamous Rasputin, whose mere presence could stop her hemophiliac son's hemorrhaging. The irony, Erickson shows, is that Alix's shyness and imperiousness masked a romantic and selfless woman. Against the matchmaking conventions of her time, Alix rebuffed all marriage overtures until she could wed her true love, Nicholas, and throughout her marriage she sought to bolster the confidence of this sensitive, weak man. While warm, affectionate, and even amusing at times, she was drawn most easily to situations where self-sacrifice was required-whether on behalf of her children or the soldiers she nursed. Ironically, her protective instincts couldn't save herself or herfamily from execution by the Bolsheviks in 1918. Once again, Erickson demonstrates her skill in limning a forceful royal who tried unsuccessfully to alter history and escape fate. Book-of-the-Month Club/History Book Club main selection; Quality Paperback Book Club/Literary Guild featured selection
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