The Romanovs: the Final Chapter

After reading Massie's Peter the Great and Catherine the Great this book was the perfect conclusion to the saga of Russian royal rule. Especially enjoyable is the author's ability to render historical fact in such a way as to make for riveting reading. His astonishingly detailed research is evident in the minutia he is able to reveal about his characters without making it tedious. The reader is lead through events almost as if there.

The Romanovs: The Final Chapter by Robert K. Massie.The Random House Publishing Group. (London, 1995). 320 pp. Nicholas the II was the last czar of Russia, because of his weakness as a ruler and the countries public unrest, Nicholas and his family, the Romanovs, were executed. Yakov Yurovsky, the leader of the executioners, told them that because of the unrest of the town they had to be taken to an inner courtyard. They were told to line up so they could take a picture and immediately started shooting. "Blood was everywhere, in rivers and pools."(Massie) After the killing Yurovsky ordered the corpses laid on the grass and undressed. He also ordered the bodies to be thrown down a mine shaft and he threw a couple of grenades so that the pit would collapse. For most of the twentieth century, this is what the world believed. After the execution many things where said, for example, that they were still alive and had escaped safely, that they were dead and that only some had escaped. People claiming to be from the royal family was very common and some investigations were held but nothing close to the truth. Alexander Advonin was not planning on finding the remains of the Romanovs but it somehow happened. The finding of the nine bodies was an investigation carried out over many years that although it faced many obstacles became very successful. The bones where very hard to put together and find out who was who because they had been burned with sulfuric acid so that their faces would deform. Since Abramov and his team didn't have enough money they determined the identity of the skulls with their own method. They used combinatorial mathematics, taking four factors: gender, age, race and height and then added other evidence and factors like a wide face, narrow face, prominent chin, a weak chin, etc. They obtained results by measuring probability and seeing different combinations of factors. The way they determined who belonged to which corpse was unique and extremely interesting. Another thing that captured my attention was how the women surivived longer then the men of the family. "Bullets fired at the daughter's chests seemed to bounce off, ricocheting around the room like hail." Marie and Anastasia were against the wall covering their heads with their arms until after a while the bullets finished them. Demidova, the other daughter, survived the first fusillade and the executioners instead or reloading they chased her with bayonets. When they finally took her down they shot her more than thirty times. While they were being laid on a sheet, one of the daughters cried out but was murdered in a moment. When Yurovsky's men where stripping one of the daughters they found her corset with rows of diamonds sewed tightly together, this "armor" had shielded her from the bullets. The book of The Romanovs: The Final Chapter shows history that has had a great impact in the world today. The Tsar's mistakes caused a great unrest among the people, for example, after the Revolution of 1905 was followed by the Bloody Sunday the people started seeing another image of the Tsar. Also, when Russia entered the First World War the Russians started having concerns about the economy and some people even planned behind the Tsar. The failures of the Tsar led to public unrest and opposition to the government increased. This eventually lead to the execution of the Romanov Family. This book also explains the research and advances they have made ever since the family was massacred, this has helped us understand what really happened. The fall of the Romanovs had a great impact in Russia, since after the execution the tsarist autocracy was over and the revolution began influencing many other countries to turn against their government and become independent.

This is another excellent book about the Romanov family, written by Massie.The book starts out by going over the Romanov's final days and their eventual demise. It continues by looking into various aspects of the tragedy, including the coverage of numerous Anasthasia imposters in later years. There were extra pages about one woman in particular, Anna Anderson, who, though she had many detracters, had many people fooled into believing that she was really the Tsar's youngest daughter. However, in this book we discover that recent DNA testing has proven that, with out a doubt, this woman was NOT Anasthasia after all!An exciting, must read for all those interested in the Romanov history and tragedy!

Based on how quickly I devoured Nicholas & Alexandra, I am surprised that finishing this took as long as it did. The book started out interesting enough but by the end I felt like I had been slogging through a thick fog ultimately not reaching the destination toward which I thought I was heading. It's also unfortunate that "The Final Chapter" was written well before the final chapter of the Romanov saga was really known. I understand the allure of publishing this as a follow-up to the brilliant previous novel, but given the number of questions that remained unanswered at the time, it seems like it was published very pre-maturely.Perhaps hindsight really is 20/20, but not only were there many unanswered questions it also often seemed as though Massie was digging for content to fill the pages. I was pleased early on when it seemed as though this would make some real and emotional connections back to the family with whom I was so enrapt last week; it was particularly vindicating to read the medical examiner's opinion mirror mine when he, speaking of how it was possible to carry out such a tragedy, explained that, "[The murderers] depersonalize the victim and make him or her into a symbol, something other than an individual human being. [The murderer] is killing the regime, the tsar, getting rid of the whole hated past and creating a new world order." From there, however, the mystery of actually discovering and disinterring the bones of the Imperial family from the mass grave came to an end quite quickly. The political intrigue of when and how to bring this truth forward held my attention for a while, but mostly I felt the pain that Alexander Avdonin expressed at the inability of scientists and politicians to work together toward a common goal. “These remains,” Avdonin said, “should be the source of unification of our people, who were split by the revolution. But they still cause division. These remains could unite the churches – our church and the church abroad – but they do not. They could unite the scientists, but, again, nothing is working out.” The frustration that must have been felt by all of those involved was very clearly conveyed, but it was created a very jarring and not wholly enjoyable reading experience.If one-third of the book relayed the intrigue of locating the Tsar and his family, and one-third was dedicated to the petty squabbles and smoothing of egos in an attempt to actually *do* something apart from bicker, it felt like the last one-third was devoted solely to the question of Anna Anderson. This, more than anything else, greatly hindered my enjoyment of the book. While she certainly played a part in the story of the missing Romanov children I felt like Massie devoted entirely too much time to her story and the intricacies of the legal battles surrounding her available DNA. This is especially true considering this book came out prior to 2007, thus precluding any chance of having a true resolution to the story. While I am glad the details of what happened have been preserved for posterity, the minutia of Virginia medical law held little to no interest for me. This is certainly not served by the fact that most anyone (I imagine) who has enough interest in the Romanovs to read this book would likely already know the fate of Anna Anderson… there is no mystery to be solved, and the legal battles just droned on and on to the point where I very nearly skipped to the next section… I simply did not find her saga to be compelling enough to warrant devoting nearly 100 pages to scientific one-upmanship and familial infighting.“It’s a question of the truth,” said Michael Thornton at the press conference that finally unmasked Ms. Anderson. Richard Schweitzer echoed the sentiment when questioned about his reluctance to accept the findings presented there. “I’m looking for the truth,” Schweitzer said, and that was really the only thing that kept me motivated through the end of this book. Once the Anna Anderson debacle was finally laid to rest Massie takes us on a journey through the living (at the time) members of the Romanov family and the question of who, if anyone, is truly now head of the family and pretender to the throne. This, while somewhat interesting, also just felt rather like the author was searching for material… a way to flesh out what really likely could have been trimmed to a couple of long-form magazine articles. This look at the present state of affairs among the surviving Romanovs was certainly more interesting than the Anna Anderson piece, but when I reached the end of the book, I wasn’t satisfied at all. There were simply too many questions remaining to be answered – Chiefly, “What happened to Anastasia? (or Marie, if you prefer)” I wish that this new edition of the book had been published with an addendum. While I think this probably worked very well as a follow-up in the mid-90’s, “The Final Chapter” has not, unfortunately, weathered the last twenty years as well as I had hoped. It was still a good read; I am glad I worked my way through it, but the magic, suspense, and emotion of Nicholas & Alexandra was almost wholly absent from this work.

As other reviewers have said, this is a great follow up to Massie's other book "Nicholas and Alexandra". It might not be as meaningful if you have not read "Nicholas and Alexandra" first."The Romanovs" is engagingly written and reads like a murder mystery. Technical details of DNA analysis are explained clearly in layman's terms so that the reader can understand what the investigators were doing. The narrative can drag in places but so far I have had trouble putting it down. Excellent read.

Narración muy interesante y amena de cómo ocurrió el descubrimiento de los restos de la familia de Nicolas II y cómo se comprobó que realmente eran los ellos, todo en medio de los riesgos que representaba hacer esto durante el régimen soviético. Muy recomendable.

If you read Nicholas and Alexandra you should also read this book.

A dispassionate history of the end of the Russian czars and the empire. Well researched and up to date. Massive is a great historian.

Very boring and repetitious book

O autor faz um relato contundente, com farta pesquisa, sobre a intimidade e a tragédia da morte dos Romanov, que de fato está ainda revestida de tristeza e mistério.