106 pages • 3-hour read
The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion and the Fall of Imperial Russia
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Themes
The Gulf Between Rich and Poor in Turn-of-the-Century Russia
Throughout The Family Romanov, Fleming emphasizes the huge disconnect between the nobility—which consists of only 870 families, or 1.5 percent of Russia’s population—and the vast, impoverished Russian population in both the cities and countryside. As Fleming explains in the Prologue, this noble minority “own[s] 90 percent of all Russia’s wealth” (2), and turns a blind eye to the deprived majority of their country’s population. At some point, this immensely disproportionate, volatile society must ignite—and it does so, in the form of revolution. Thus, the gap between rich and poor becomes an impetus for change throughout the novel.
Fleming opens her book with the scene of an extravagant costume ball in St. Petersburg’s Winter Palace, immediately followed by a depiction of the grim realities of Russian peasant and working-class urban life. Thus, Fleming quickly sets up the dichotomy between rich and poor she will continue to emphasize throughout her work. The author takes pains to emphasize just how much wealth and territory Tsar Nicholas II possesses: the tsar rules a population of 130 million over “one-sixth of the planet’s land surface” (3), and with a fortune valued at $45 million in US dollars, he is “the richest monarch in the world” (3). Along with Nicholas and his wife, the other nobles, born into lives of privilege, maintain “an unshakable belief in their own superiority” (2). Thus, they “spen[d] fortunes” (2) on jeweled costumes for the ball and enjoy an “exquisite French supper” (5), while outside the palace, Russia starves.
As Fleming explains, the gap between rich and poor is so severe partly because the nobles “romanticize” (5) peasant life: having no interaction with the lower classes, they imagine peasants “‘glowing with [the] good health’” of country living (5), while in fact these Russians have no food except bread stretched with clay or straw in the flour. In contrast to the Romanovs’ three-mile-long palace, peasants live in one- or two-room huts with no furniture. As the population rises, many abandon their country farms for Russia’s cities, where they find an equally dismal situation: factory workers are ill-treated and underpaid, living in overcrowded, filthy lodging. Again, the nobles—and the tsar himself—show no concern for the unfair policies that lead to poverty and suffering.
Throughout The Family Romanov, Fleming repeats the pattern established in the Prologue, contrasting the Romanovs’ wealth and privileges with the realities of poor Russian citizens. A description of the grand duchesses’ blissful childhood, where they learn from private tutors and spend their days playing tennis and bicycling, is juxtaposed with the account of a teenage shop girl in St. Petersburg. This shop girl, while “catering” (96) to the nobles who patronize expensive stores, receives none of their luxuries herself. Rather, she must spend fifteen-hour days working on her feet, and still has to “‘beg’” (96) her employer for enough money to buy food. Later, Alexei Romanov’s education from indulgent tutors is contrasted with the apprenticeship of 8-year-old Nicholas in St. Petersburg. Nicholas is treated as “cheap labor” (120), and his employer/teacher insists “‘the law gives [him] the right to […] beat [Nicholas] with a rod’” (121).
With such an incredible gap in wealth in Russia, and the wealthy policymakers’ refusal to improve working and living conditions, a social and political uprising is inevitable. This uprising, of course, becomes the Russian Revolution, which shapes much of The Family Romanov’s narrative. Even after the Romanovs are stripped of most of their fortune and placed under house arrest, the gap between them and less-privileged villagers contributes to their deaths. Ekaterinburg officials “resent” the Romanovs’ “relative comfort” in their mansion prison (229), and this resentment leads to the decision to murder the former royals. As the book ends, the gulf between rich and poor in Russia has led to deadly violence as well as widespread social and political change.
The Damage Caused by Poor Leadership
In Part Two of The Family Romanov, Fleming opens with the quote from author Carl Joubert: “‘What a pity that Nicholas sleeps!’” (57). Throughout the book, it is Tsar Nicholas’s complete refusal to take action or even look and listen clearly to what is taking place in his country that leads to his downfall and the end of the Russian autocracy. Meanwhile, his wife, Alexandra, displays her own brand of blindness, refusing to see that “holy man” Rasputin is a charlatan and thus damaging both Russia’s royal legacy and its political strength. The rulers’ blindness causes suffering and death for others, and eventually themselves, and creates a portrait of political leaders unable to take responsibility for themselves and their people.
Tsar Nicholas’s poor leadership begins with the fact that, as he confides to his cousin, he “‘never wanted to become’” tsar (29). Rather than accepting that the duty is his, whether he wants it or not, Nicholas chooses to leave important political decisions to his ministers and his wife. However, whenever his ministers’ council threatens Nicholas’s own security or comfort, he refuses to listen. When his prime minister warns him that if he does not grant the people some political power, the resulting violent revolution will “‘sweep away a thousand years of history’” (65), Nicholas stubbornly insists that the Russian autocracy must prevail. Only when Nicholas’s cousin threatens to kill himself does Nicholas agree to establish a legislature to provide a voice for the people. However, as soon as this legislature attempts to make changes that threaten Nicholas’s absolute power, he abolishes what he calls “‘filth’” and “‘a hearth of revolutionaries’” (83). Nicholas absolutely refuses to listen to both his advisers and his citizens, and he can’t see that the people won’t consent to be silenced.
While Nicholas ignores his ministers if it serves his own purpose to do so, the one person he never contradicts is his wife. In the years leading up to World War I, Alexandra becomes increasingly dependent on the supposed healer Rasputin, whom she believes can both heal her son and see the future. Despite reports from Prime Minister Stolypin and from the guards whom Nicholas himself appointed to watch Rasputin, both Nicholas and Alexandra refuse to believe that the Rasputin is actually a fraud. Rather, as the war takes more and more lives, Alexandra becomes convinced that Rasputin’s “‘wisdom’” to see “‘far ahead’” enables him to “‘counsel what is right for [Nicholas] and our country’” (147-48). Thus, when Rasputin asks that government ministers be replaced with his friends, Alexandra passes the requests on to Nicholas, who grants them. In a time of war, the lack of capable leaders proves disastrous, and the country sees Nicholas and Alexandra as puppets controlled by “‘the Reign of Rasputin’” (150). The public’s lack of faith irrevocably damages not only the tsar’s own reign, but the “‘centuries-old ties which have sustained Russia’” (150). As one legislative member puts it, “‘Dark forces are destroying the Romanov dynasty’” (150).
A greater “dark force” than Rasputin, however, is the royal family’s willful blindness—a weakness that continues after Rasputin’s assassination. Once revolution appears inevitable, both Alexandra and Nicholas receive council that the tsar must step down in order to maintain peace—council they both ignore. When the tsar’s cousin tells the royals their “‘blind stubbornness’” will cause the angry nation to “‘reach the explosion point’” (160), they insist he’s exaggerating. On the day mobs begin to make revolution in St. Petersburg, Nicholas merely orders soldiers to suppress them, and he spends his evening “playing dominoes” (163). As Nicholas’s own soldiers turn against him, he and 300 years of Romanov rule are overthrown. By the time Nicholas is forced to abdicate, a new government has already been established. Again, Nicholas has taken no action, and simply allowed revolution to swallow his legacy as he looks the other way.
In a letter to his brother, the tsar’s cousin, Sandro, describes the last days of Nicholas and Alexandra’s reign as “‘total blindness and deafness’” (161). Such blindness obliterates not only a family, but a dynasty, and leads to the end of one oppressive political system and the rise of another. As Nicholas’s ministers have counseled him so often, if the tsar had been willing to witness the plight of his people and take action, years of violence and destruction may have been prevented.
Revolution and the Russian People’s Fight for a Voice
In the Prologue of The Family Romanov, Fleming describes the unfair conditions Russians face in both country and city at the turn of the 20th century. As Fleming says, most Russians dare to dream of more only at nights spent in taverns, where a “drunken haze” allows them to see “‘reflections of a better, less unjust world’” (11). The Family Romanov is not only the story of the Romanovs’ downfall, but also the chronicle of how Russian citizens’ hopes for a better society move from the realm of dreams to action. Throughout the book, the rise of new ways of thinking, and a refusal to accept oppression, leads to revolution and widespread change, but these transformations don’t give Russians the freedom they’ve hoped for.
Fleming identifies the growth of revolutionary sentiment in the early 1900s as a result of an increased ability to read. Fleming says that in the ten years from 1895 to 1905, the number of literate workers in Moscow grows by 20%, while in St. Petersburg three times more working-class Russians can read than in the rest of Russia. Even though political writing is censored, books teach the Russians “‘how to think’” and allow them to “‘[catch] sight of a new life’” (60). Thus workers take action for the first time, striking and demanding, among other basic rights, a “living wage” and an “eight-hour workday” (60). However, rather than listening to the people’s demands, the tsar sends soldiers against them and causes a massacre—an act that doesn’t discourage the people, but rather increases their drive to fight oppression. Thus, these early protests establish a pattern where increasing violence against Russian citizens leads to greater and greater acts of revolution.
In addition to protests and marches in the streets, Russians use the ideas they’ve learned from books to attempt to affect political change. The people work to establish a Duma, or a legislature with elected representatives from all social classes, as they understand that only if they have “a voice in how their country was run” can they better their society (64). While the tsar repeatedly shuts down this Duma, the people continue to fight for this all-important voice.
As The Family Romanov continues, conflict arises between the more moderate supporters of the Duma, and the “true revolutionaries,” who want to stage a “violent overthrow of the tsar” and place all power and property in the people’s hands—in other words, to establish a communist system (74). Lenin—himself a writer who knows the power of words and ideas in bringing about social change—becomes an important advocate of this system. Lenin believes “strong leaders” (76) such as himself will “guide” Russians through revolution, and then return power to the people themselves.
The different forms of revolution brewing in Russia—mass protests in the street, hope in a government of elected officials, and the communist goal of a “completely free, equal, and classless society” (77)—all come together in the revolutionary action of March 1917. The people’s refusal to work, their increasingly violent demonstrations, and even the tsar’s soldiers’ choice to join protestors, rather than fighting against them, all contribute to bring revolution to Russia. These mass actions affect huge change, as Nicholas abdicates and the Duma creates a new Provisional Government. The people feel “‘as if a heavy rock had suddenly been lifted from our shoulders’” (177), as they hope to finally live in a free society where they’re granted an equal voice.
This new Provisional Government represents the second type of revolution, one relying on elected representatives to speak for the people. The government plans to establish a national “‘constituent assembly’” (166) with representatives from Russia, and hopefully create a democratic government. However, this plan never comes to fruition because of the third type of revolution: the communist one. Lenin again becomes a key figure in these final chapters of The Family Romanov, as he exposes the Provisional Government’s hypocrisy and takes power himself. Lenin institutes communist policies, making private ownership illegal, seizing factories, banks and churches as government property, and rationing food and electricity. Ultimately, citizens find themselves living with the same poverty as they did before the revolution, and they are no longer granted the right to elect representatives or exercise free speech in the new communist government.
When he is close to his deathbed, Lenin realizes that instead of creating the ideal, free and equal society he hoped for, he has replaced royal oppression with “a government that was just as suppressive of the common people” (246). For Russian citizens, the fight for an equal voice has ended in defeat. As Lenin’s successor, Stalin, takes power, Russians end up where they began: “politically voiceless,” in a society controlled by “repression” and “fear” (246) rather than the equality they fought so valiantly for.
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