Book of the month
When I was a kid, we drove to town on Saturday night to buy five dollars'
worth of edibles to see us through the coming week, and again on Sunday
for Mass at Lady of the Lake Catholic church, after which Dad made a small
detour at Alton Bay to buy the Boston Sunday Post. Like all newspapers
papers of the day, the Post had a Sunday Supplement that Joe and I
divided after first devouring the comics. There was always a lengthy bit of
fiction and a colorful bit of history, which is how I first learned about
the Inca dwellings at Macchu Pichu and the complicated murder of Grigori
Rasputin, who was poisoned, shot, kicked in the head, and drowned under the
ice in 1917. Almost 90 years later, the estimable Antony Beevor givews us
the full story in Rasputin:
The Downfall of the Romanovs. It was worth the wait.
Mr Beevor graduated from one of England's elite prep schools and the British equivalent of West Point. After Sandhurst, he commanded a troop of three Chieftain main battle tanks in Germany for several years before deciding he'd rather be a writer like his mother and grandmother. He went on to publish 4 novels and 13 mostly military histories, selling 9 million copies in 38 languages including English, of which I've read several, all of them excellent.
Rasputin was an extraordinary man from Siberia, a tall and usually dirty monk who made his way to the imperial capital of St. Petersburg and inveigled himself into the family of Nicholas II, the last member of the Romanov dynasty that ruled Russia for 300 years. Nicholas had married a German princess, Alix of Hesse, the granddaughter of England's Queen Victoria and therefore a transmitter of "the royal disease" of hemophilia, mostly carried by females while mostly afflicting males. The Grand Duchess Olga was born in 1895, Tatiana in 1897, Maria in 1899, and the ultimately famous Anastasia in 1901. "My God! What a disappointment!" cried their aunt, "... a fourth girl!"
To the family's great joy, and indeed all of Russia's, the Tsarevich Alexei was born in 1904. Alas, the bleeding began at his birth when the umbilical cord was cut, and became life threatening when he was eight years old and suffered an agonizing hemorrhage in his thigh and belly. After 11 days, he was given the last rites of the Orthodox church, but he survived for the time being.
Weirdly, Rasputin seemed able to heal the boy of the worst of his affliction, and as a result became a family favorite. Nicholas and Alix called him Our Friend and foolishly trusted him to guide them and, through them, to guide Russia through the calamity of the First World War. When the Tsar decided to take command of the army, Rasputin encouraged him, so that not only did Russia fail to hold its own against the German Empire, but the blame of course fell entirely on the Tsar. When revolution took hold of St Petersburg (by then called Petrograd because it sounded more Russian) in March 1917, Nicholas tried first to abdicate in favor of poor Alexi, then to his own brother the Grand Duke Michael, only to have the latter demur to the Duma, which opted for a republic that lasted only eight months. In November the republic was overthrown by the Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin and Leon Trotsky -- and ultimately Joseph Stalin, who deemed the rulers to be Communists and the country to be the Soviet Union.
The seven Romanovs were murdered in Yekaterinburg in June 1918 when counter-revolutionary forces seemed to be nearing the city. Their bodies were thrown into a mine shaft, then recovered, burned, and buried in two different sites. DNA testing in 1993 and 2015 confirmed that these were indeed the bodies of Nicholas, Alix, the four Grand Duchesses, and the Tsarevich Alexi.
Oops, I'm ignoring Rasputin, but no matter; I gave away his death in my first paragraph. Better that you read Mr Beevor's version instead. Grab a copy!
Books from the webmaster
Cowboy: The Interpreter Who Became a Soldier, a Warlord, and One More Casualty of Our War in Vietnam
The Only War We've Got: Early Days in South Vietnam
Flying Tigers: Claire Chennault & His American Volunteers, 1941-1942
Tales of the Flying Tigers (the factoids that didn't make it into the book)
The Lady and the Tigers (Olga Greenlaw)
Poland's Daughter: How I Learned About Love, War, and Exile
Glen Edwards: Diary of a Bomber Pilot
A Vision So Noble: John Boyd, the OODA Loop, and America's War on Terror
The Country Northward: A Hiker's Journal
Remains: A Story of the Flying Tigers
Incident at Muc Wa: A Story of the Vietnam War
The High Country Illuminator: A Tale of Light and Darkness and the Ski Bums of Avalon
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Once or twice a month, I send out an email newsletter about my books and the subjects covered in them, most often about military aviation and the wars of the past hundred years. You can unsubscribe at any time. (If your browser spits out a Cookie warning, it's not my doing! It's Mailchimp's cookie, and I never see it.)Question? Comment? Newsletter? Send me an email. Blue skies! -- Dan Ford
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