Word: rasputin
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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NICHOLAS AND ALEXANDRA, by Robert K. Massie. In telling the tragic story of Czar Nicholas II and his wife, the last of the Romanov dynasty, Author Massie stresses the crucial role of Rasputin in discrediting the imperial family in the people's eyes...
...seen by Massie, the Romanovs' 300 years' rule was doomed by the Czarevich's hemophilia: it put the imperial pair in the oily hands of Rasputin, whose prayers they believed would heal their more than fragile son Alexis. Rasputin not only destroyed the morale of the aristocracy, he also made it impossible for Nicholas to heed sensible advice until it was too late. And he fatally fractured the image of the Czar in the mind of the masses. The imperial pair saw a calumniated saint in Rasputin; the people, in the words of a monarchist member...
...Innocents. The old sinister horror movie of Rasputin has had many reruns. What is new about the Massie version is the credible manner in which he puts the obscene Rasputin goings-on into the context of the Romanov court -at once bizarre and simple, familiar and ceremonious-fatally rooted in the half-barbaric system of old Muscovy...
...unpleasant feature was the omnipresent police spies among the innumerable servants-a part of the monarchical system that the Bolsheviks have enthusiastically retained. And there was Rasputin. The people might not have grudged the Czar his splendor, but Rasputin was too much. Through his infatuation with the dirty monk, Nicky was finally severed from the people who he believed worshiped...
Only a Tolstoy could do justice to the domestic story of Nicky and Alicky -its innocence, affections and jumble of family emotions. Only a Dostoevsky could do justice to the story of the Romanovs and Rasputin. Author Massie's history covers two terrible decades in European history and recreates the doomed Romanovs with admirable clar ity. The icons have gone, but a sad faded photograph remains...