It's always good to learn something new.....I'm glad you did. Although, I'm sure you've got a pretty good scope on what happened to Romanov's in the last days of the Russian Empire, it seems like the book didn't address much of what was going on in Russia at the same time.
1. The tzar was killed by a small group of revolutionaries. In fact most of the people in power at the time had nothing to do with the murder, the decision was made by a very small group. Most Russians didn't even know what happened to tzars until later. Saying that they got killed because the general crowd was hungry and mad at them is inaccurate to say the least.
2. Tzar Nicholas II was a very weak politician and leader, he's partially responsible for the collapse of the Russia at the end of WWI. There were many factors at hand that decided the fate of the family, many of those were direct results of his actions, many were not. Political power for ages has been usurped and twisted through murder. French monarchy didn't fare much better in the French revolution, which partially served as a model for Russian revolution. Thus, it is important to understand the overall picture before coming to hasty conclusions.
3. Russia at the beginning of last century was a country torn by civil war where people in the same family would often end up on different sides. In the context of this war death of the Tzars is only a small piece of the general terrible and tumultuous puzzle of what was going on in the country. |