The Romanovs: 1613-1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore,
Weidenfeld and Nicolson, £25
Russia and her autocratic rulers have always been larger than life. The empire itself grew by 20,000 square miles a year from 1613 until, by the late 19th century, the tsars (the word is derived from “Caesar”) ruled a sixth of the globe. Were the 20 sovereigns of the Romanov dynasty capable of ruling an empire this size? Hardly.
Simon Sebag Montefiore has conceived his book as a study in character: the “distorting effect of absolute power on personality”. It certainly provides a fascinating psychological study of this succession of megalomaniacs, madmen and mediocrities.
It was Alexei, son of the first tsar, Michael, who agreed to an alliance with his nobles – which meant they were free to rule over their own vast estates and dispense justice, often vicious and cruel, to their serfs – in return for their loyalty. This alliance lasted until 1861 when Alexander II emancipated the 22 million serfs. Nonetheless, the core of the great families carried on flaunting their wealth and power until the 1917 Revolution.
There was a constant tension, as the author describes, between the need for Russia to maintain its vast borders and at the same time project a power proportionate to its imperial pretensions within a backward society which, unlike the rest of Europe, did not develop assemblies and civil institutions. By the 19th century, Russia had a vast bureaucracy of petty functionaries, alongside a largely irresponsible aristocratic class and a royal family imprisoned by protocol and semi-mystical status.
The tsars had a fourfold function, as religious leaders, as imperial heads of state, as a focus of nationalist pride and as military warlords. Six of the last 12 tsars were murdered and there were five assassination attempts on Alexander II, who ruled from 1855 to 1881, before he was finally killed.
Nicholas II was a weak and indecisive figure who commented on his sudden accession in 1894: “I’m not ready to be tsar. I never wanted to become one.
I’ve no idea of even how to talk to the ministers.” His ancestress, the Empress Anna, who reigned for a decade from 1730, is described by the author as “lazy, vicious and weak, distracted by hunting, spying and dwarf-baiting”. Peter the Great had his son and heir tortured to death and Catherine the Great was complicit in the murder of her husband, Peter II.
Nicholas I, emperor from 1825 to 1855, lived in “Olympian isolation” and created the peculiarly Russian institution of the secret police. A lady-in-waiting remarked on his “arrogant and cruel expression”.
Sebag Montefiore reminds us in his afterword, where he reflects on the style of Putin’s government, that there is “nothing incompatible about modernity and authoritarianism”.
He writes with knowledge and gusto, though in my view he is too keen to highlight salacious details concerning the private lives of this dysfunctional dynasty. He also has a somewhat pretentious way of turning the different reigns into a series of theatrical performances, each with its own cast of characters, which makes their behaviour seem more frivolous than necessary.
The violence of the Bolsheviks, who imposed the Soviet state which succeeded these corrupt and backward rulers, was itself deplorable, resulting in more misery for the peasants turned proletariat. But after reading this book, readers will have some sympathy for Trotsky’s description of the dynasty as “a world of icons and cockroaches”.
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