A Lifelong Passion: Nicholas and Alexandra: Their Own Story

by Sergei Mironenko, Andrei Maylunas

These letters, most of which are published here for the first time, offer an intimate look at some of the most momentous events of the early 1900s, including Russia's participation in World War I and the fall of the Romanov dynasty in the Bolshevik revolution. Among the correspondents are Alexandra's beloved but domineering grandmother, Queen Victoria of England, and Nicholas' cousin, Kaiser Wilhelm of Germany. Most poignant, though, are the letters and diaries of the last Tsar and Tsarina, which stand as eloquent expressions of one of the great love affairs of this century.



A Lifelong Passion begins in 1884 with the couple's first childhood meeting and chronicles their intense courtship and first joyful years of marriage. The Romanovs' happiness was not to last, however, as they were quickly overtaken by the forces of war and revolution. The discovery that their only son and heir Alexei was stricken with hemophilia opened the family to the formidable and perhaps malign influence of the monk Rasputin, whose gory death at the hands of two Grand Dukes is here recounted by one of the murderers. Though unshaken in their love for one another, Nicholas and Alexandra could not hold their country together, and their story ends with a chilling account of their assassination by the Bolshevik revolutionaries.

Genres: History, Nonfiction, Biography, Russia, Russian History, Royalty, Romanovs

688 pages, Hardcover

First published October 27, 1997

Reviews

[Laurie · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really liked this book, it taught me a lot about the Romanov family and how they lived their lives. It is an intimate look at their lives through their journals, private correspondence, diaries, and letters. A true tender love story full of intrigue, betrayal, and sorrow.
As the authors wrote: "There is something magical about this family, both in the way they lived and the dignity and enduring love with which they faced their deaths."

[Linda Harkins · Rating 5 out of 5]

Nothing equals reading primary sources! Both authors, who are also historians, acknowledge the invaluable assistance of the staff of the State Archives of the Russian Federation as well as staff at the Royal Archives at Windsor Castle. They note in their acknowledgements the impossibility of compiling this book without that expert help. Letters between Nicky and Alix as well as many other members of the tsar's family provide an accurate and intimate account of the lives of the Romanovs. Nicky is utterly unprepared for the duties thrust upon him at age twenty-six due to his father's untimely death. Deeply religious, both Nicholas and Alexandra fall under the spell of Rasputin who repeatedly assures them as long as he is alive nothing will prevent the survival of their son and the royal dynasty. Even today circumstances remain unclear surrounding the Bolshevik decision to execute the Romanovs. It was not until 1991 that the remains of Nicholas, Alexandra, their four daughters, their only son, and several of their servants were actually discovered near Ekaterinburg--absolute proof that not a single one of this magical family survived.

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Fascinating collection of documents - some of them are well known, like the excerpts from Prince Yussoupov's unreliable memoirs, others like many of the quotes from letters and diaries of the extensive Romanov family are fascinating because unknown. The book is presented and packaged for the 'Nicholas & Alexandra' crowd but it is far more astute and interesting then that.

[Maria Quinlan · Rating 3 out of 5]

Just reading people's letters is interesting. These two should have been middle class family living in the suburbs, not rulers by any measure.

When I say like it, I mean reading the letters gives insight, not agreeing with them whatsoever!

[Zosi · Rating 5 out of 5]

Gonna be honest here I thought this was going to be a slog because it was just letters, but I couldn’t put it down. It provided an intimate look at the family, and the letters and testimonies from other major players made it feel more like a cohesive story. Am very glad I finally decided to read it.

[Dorothy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Quite literally breathtaking. Perhaps one of the best eye-witness accounts of the demise of the old world with the advent of WWI that I have read despite the myopia of the witnesses themselves.

The tragic character flaws of Nicholas and Alexandra ensured their doom. Nicholas's inadequacy and indecisiveness rendered him an ineffectual tsar and commander-in-chief and demonstrated him to be a dangerously anachronistic emblem of autocracy in a world of constitutional monarchies and burgeoning socialism. Alexandra was the consummate autocratic consort, unwavering in her belief in Nicholas even as she cajoled and harried him to ultimately destructive decisions. Never waylaid by inconvenient facts and never in doubt was Alexandra. Committed to theocratic autocracy and the articulated denial of any governmental role for the people, Alexandra and Nicholas isolated themselves from reality and enclosed themselves in their gilded palaces and warm nuclear family.

Rasputin, the villain of the common story was only able to flourish in the agar of Nicholas's passive indecision and Alexandra's fanatic belief in his fraudulent exhortations that he only was their salvation. He was proven right that after his assassination the dynasty was ended. A self-fulfilling prophesy of the most catastrophic sort

The hemophilia suffered by Alexei and seemingly responsive only to Rasputin was the device by which the royal family involuted and shut out the world as it violently seized around them nationally and internationally.

The lifelong passion between the tsar and tsarina was treacly, co-dependent, not a little nauseating and utterly horrifying as its warm embrace and fevered pitch rendered them deaf, dumb and blind to reality and their role as rulers. The earnest pleas to save Russia and themselves and the wise guidance from other family members and advisers were rejected entirely. Those who cautioned against the danger of Rasputin and Nicholas and Alexandra's obdurate clinging to autocracy even as the 20th century dawned and roared ahead were alienated and denied.

As David Lloyd George (British PM) remarked, Nicholas could have had a long and happy life had he not been born emperor.

Last note: this is not a read for those with only superficial knowledge of Russia, the Bolshevik Revolution and the events leading up to and of WWI. Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra is a strong first read and then I recommend George, Nicholas and Wilhelm by Miranda Carter.

[Anne (In Search of Wonder) · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is a collection of letters and journal entries written by the last tsar and tsarina of Russia. As the title suggests, Nicholas and Alexandra, unlike most royal couples, loved each other passionately throughout their lives. Their prolific writings tell the story of their struggles, not only in ruling Russia, but in raising their family, in particular their struggle with the heir's hemophiliac disease, which led eventually to the downfall of both the country and their family. The story ends tragically in their untimely death at the hands of the Communists during the Bolshevik Revolution.

[S. · Rating 5 out of 5]

I do not know half my relatives but I can now tell you which Romanov had haemorrhoids.

On a more serious note, this wrist-breaking book is a historical diamond mine of translated letters, diaries, logs, and testimonies from the last years of Tsarist Russia, letting both major and minor players tell you this unforgettable saga in their own words. The researchers have gone above and beyond as they bring together countless timelines and arcs to give you the last of the Romanovs in all their horror and beauty and idiocy and glory.

[Anna · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book is just amazing. It's filled with letters and excerpts from memoirs and journals from many members of the Russian Imperial Family, as well as from their relatives, from tutors to the Imperial children, Ministers to the Tsar, foreign ambassadors, etc. Most of the material is only published in this book, and many of the memoirs cited are difficult to find, so this is a real treasure. All of the letters and diaries are interesting in themselves, but some are especially touching like the children of the last Tsar writing to their parents and Nicholas and Alexandra's letters to each other - filled with love - during their engagement, Queen Victoria's letters to Nicholas. I cannot recommend this book enough for anyone interested not only in Nicholas and Alexandra, but in all the family.

[Patty · Rating 4 out of 5]

You truly must be a history buff to love this book. I am, but I can see where some may not. It begins in 1881 in Russia where Nicholas II the last Tsar of Russia was overthrown and murdered along with his family. Follow their lives and those of the children in this epic story. Not for everyone, much detail. But if you enjoy accurate historicals you will enjoy it. There is romance between Nicholas and Alexandra.

[Rachael · Rating 5 out of 5]

i don't know why i read books about the romanovs because i always cry at the end

[Abby Rose · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful, just wonderful! This is one of the very BEST resources I've found on the Romanov family in all the research I've been doing lately.

Life-long Passion is a book of letters, diary entries, and memoir pieces from the Romanovs and those closest to them. They are arranged in chronological order, starting with Nicholas Romanov as a young man with his father still alive and believing he has many years before he himself will have to become the Tsar of Russia. We see his reaction to meeting his future wife, Alice (Alexandra), as a twelve year old at Ella's wedding for the first time and, through their correspondence, see them fall in love in their own words. It's very beautiful. And, of course, tragic, as the collection of correspondence continues well into the war and his giving up the throne and the family's imprisonment.

The most interesting part of this collection for me were the letters by Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei, and I wish there had been more of those, as I adored them and learned a lot about each child's personality from them. I also loved the memoirs of Felix, Rasputin's murderer. He is a most fascinating historical figure, and he definitely had a way with words that make you feel quite charmed by him even years after his death. One can see why his wife Irina (cousin of the Romanov children) admired him and wanted him even with his messed up past and the unsavory rumors about him.

My least favorite parts were when the back and forth love letters of Nicholas and Alexandra didn't have enough breaks in-between them for historical background and to just a breather from their constant declarations of love. Just because I think they're adorable, doesn't mean I want to read page after page, after freaking page of "I love YOU, more, darling," "No, I love YOU, more, dearest wify..." (We get it... Lots of love... Moving on, if you please...)

Basically it's the historical and literary equivalent, of "No, YOU hang up first..." and it does kind of make one want to roll ones eyes after a while, no matter how cute they are. All of these letters were great, they just shouldn't have been so lumped together -- space those suckers out!

I also had a really hard time reading Yurovsky's accounts at the end. That was just uncomfortable. The way he causally talks about shooting an entire family in cold blood is just...ugh... I think this man might have been a sociopath... How else do you explain that? I mean, really. It's upsetting. Also, the accounts of how killers just snatched other Romanov family members (like the tsar's brother, and Alexandra's sister) from their beds at night more or less to murder them... It's like, dude, Russia is MESSED UP. Shakes head. Shame on you sickos. Sorry I can't articulate myself better on this subject, but since I'M not a sociopath, I find this really hard to stomach and express my feelings on. It's just plain sick.

Also, I found it somewhat irksome that certain documents presented about who was where during what event (mostly towards the end of this book) contradicted other ones. I'm pleased they were all included, but I think the Historical note at the end should have touched on this and explained it better. Earlier on in the book there were a lot of footnotes saying things like "So and so was mistaken when they wrote this" that were EXTREMELY helpful in getting a picture of what was going on, but then this petered out towards the end and I was a little confused. It makes my personal research a little more difficult, is all.

My last nitpick is that there aren't nearly enough pictures -- hardly any, and most of them are official portraits, not even photographs.

Still, for when this was published, the content is very good.

Overall, I highly recommend this book.

[Lora Shouse · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book contains some good supplementary material in the introduction and the historical afterward, but most of the book is a collection of letters between Nicholas II, the last Tsar of Russia, and his wife Alexandra along with some of their diary entries. Additionally, there are many letters to and from other members of their family, from some of these family members back and forth to each other, and excerpts from some of the diaries and memoirs of some of these family members and friends. A handful of letters and memoirs of other people who impacted the history of this time and excerpts from a few historical documents are also sprinkled throughout.

The authors were connected with the state archives of the Russian Federation, and as such had access to the letters and other papers of the Tsar and his family. A few of the letters quoted are from the Royal Archives at Windsor.

It’s a bittersweet story about the close relationship between the Tsar and his wife against the increasingly turbulent background of turn-of-the-century Russia. They had four beautiful daughters before their long-awaited son was born. The lifelong illness of their son was their greatest worry as they didn’t want word about it to get out fearing that it would adversely affect his chances of eventually becoming Tsar.

The whole situation about Rasputin is covered pretty thoroughly. Rasputin turns out to be not much like I expected him to be. It appears that the main source of his influence over the Royal Family was that he was a hypnotist. He could use his hypnotic powers to relieve the pain of the Tsar’s son, Alexi, who suffered from hemophilia, when he had an attack. The other members of the immediate family seem to have used him for stress relief. More distant family members worried that Rasputin was exercising undue influence on them and tried to get them to distance themselves from him somehow.

The reports of the group of people who assassinated Rasputin are given in detail. All of them seemed to have been convinced that by killing him they were somehow saving Russia. It didn’t work. The biggest boost to Rasputin’s myth is that they found him almost impossible to kill. They tried poison, and shot him twice, and were convinced he was dead, but he kept getting back up.

Not long after that, the government disintegrated. The Tsar was forced to abdicate and his family was placed under house arrest. They lived for several months at the farm where they had spent most of their life anyway. Then they were sent to a place in Siberia for a while. Finally, they were taken to a town called Ekaterinburg. About this time, the provisional government which had been in charge of them was also toppled, and the more hardline Bolsheviks took over. Not long afterward the whole family, along with several servants, was shot and taken out into the woods to be buried. The bodies were not found until 1991, but it is now known that, despite persistent rumors that either the Tsar’s son or his youngest daughter escaped, none of them survived.

[Izzy Dee · Rating 5 out of 5]

No secondhand account is made more intimate than by the access of letters, diaries and memoirs of the people involved during the ominous reign of the last tsar, Nicholas II and the prosperous and happy years before that. A devoted family man, a dutiful son and loving husband, Nicky did not desire the role of a ruler despite being destined to it. His weak foundation has made him ineffective especially in the face of various scandals that have rocked his rule while suffering from an indecision that always leads him to go for the last opinion presented to him.

In his domestic life, Nicky shares a steadfast and enduring relationship with Alix of Hesse, whom he was deeply devoted with until the end. Their turbulent family life has been constantly afflicted by their struggle for an heir which had been unsuccessful after a series of female births. Having desperately clung for a miracle, the Tsarina resorted to a spiritual fanaticism. A son was then born, only for it to be constantly plagued with a close brush with death due to hemophilia. Desperate to save the heir's life, the tsarina sought the intervention of a staretz Rasputin, who was able to temporarily put an end to the heir's suffering through hypnosis. The influence of Rasputin towards the imperial family has grown momentum with the aid of Alix's blind fanaticism that even some of the members of the family had to interfere. Dismissing the negative remarks as slander, Alix and in turn Nicky distanced themselves from the family.

Political unrest had been rampant around the same time and had been fueled after the grisly event called Bloody Sunday and their staggering loss during their advance against the Germans. A civil war had broken out within Russia and with the imperial family suffering internal conflicts after Rasputin's murder and a string of morganatic marriages, the Romanov rule was on its way to its doom.

I've read various accounts about the Romanovs, one was by Robert Massie which was also an interesting and superb read with its well-researched and documented series of events. This book is a great addition for an in-depth learning of the last Tsar and the events that had taken place before Nicky's rule up until their execution in 1918, putting an end to a three century tsarist regime in Russia and opening the gates towards a communist rule.

[Suzanne Edwards · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a fascinating and horrifying selection of letters, diaries and memoirs showing the best and worst of humanity. Whilst despairing of the naivety and arrogance of Nicholas and Alendra, I had to admire their devotion to each other and their children. The brutality and day to day callous cruelty of their captors in the last 16 or so months of their lives and the viciousness both of their deaths and those of family members was truly shocking and shameful. We all know of the vile and self interested machinations of the British royal family and government but it still made for breathtakingly shocking reading when you actually saw the exchange of letters, telegrams and memos.
An incredible collection of primary source material that, regrettably, I don’t think would make publication in today’s Russia.

[Daniel · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes with historical figures, it's easy to forget that they are ultimately just people too. Containing diary entries and letters on an almost day-to-day basis, you will not get any conclusions or overviews of historical fact. It is primarily a love story of sorts. So be aware of that. But you do get interesting insights on their relationship, politics, and feelings of both Nicholas and Alexandra, as well as those close to them. Things you sometimes do not get a substantial amount of in history books. A nice change of pace to the usual history that I read.

[Klissia · Rating 4 out of 5]

A voyeuristic reading about private and intimate letters from the family and cut from the Romanovs.

A long Russian "passion", of the fall of a dynasty, shrouded in mysticism, fanaticism, revolution, with interesting historical characters and of course tragic deaths.

Above all in the Russian spotlight is the love and devotion that Czar Nicholas and Czarina Alexandra had for each other and for the family, something that isolated them from "reality", from the people and from the imperial family itself ...

[Katya Lenard · Rating 5 out of 5]

An amazing work with a wealth of information. Not only do we get to see some of Nicholas and Alix's personal correspondence and diaries, we see letters, diaries and other memorandum from their relatives, friends, ministers and others that corroborate the information.
There were so many people involved in the drama that was Imperial Russia. It's so interesting to see their point of view in their own words.

[Martyn Looms · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book for £1 in I discount store. It is without doubt one of the best researched books of the end of the Romanov dynasty. The authors offer no judgement or contemporary analysis of the account, just simply an almost daily diary of the Romanov family ( also royal children, state official and Bolshevik agitators). An excellent read for those who love quality history books

[Brittany · Rating 5 out of 5]

Splendid. An inside peek at the life of the last Czar of Russia. Admittedly, I was already a huge fan of this time period, but this collection of letters was stunning. Showing the private letters from members of the whole royal family, along with assorted friends and relatives, the collection brings the story to life – and makes its inevitable ending even more horrible.

[Nancy Moffett · Rating 4 out of 5]

It was a little challenging to keep all the characters straight. I never realized how close the Romanov were to all the other royals around the (western) world. Tragic on many levels but also full of sincere love. Literate and multilingual! Interesting in a boring way.

[Jinjer · Rating 5 out of 5]

Amazing. The format is great with the letters and diaries and memoir excerpts in chronological order. The tension really builds as we get closer to the family's execution. The love that they all had for each other was really lovely to read and heartbreaking knowing how it was all going to end.

[Kaitlin Jundt · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book was heartbreaking. Very interesting to read diary entries of the Romanovs. It was sad to even read the entries of the assassins. Such a tragedy.

[Judith Fisher · Rating 5 out of 5]

Much more interesting than I expected. A wonderful insight into the European royal families generally and a good way to understand the events that led up to the murders of the Russian royal family.

[Agnes · Rating 5 out of 5]

It's the third time I've read this book and I still love it just as much as the first time!!!

[Annalisa Marinelli · Rating 5 out of 5]

really cool thing i learned from this is that Nicholas and Alexandra were a very rare example of a royal couple that was actually madly in love with each other. they are cousins tho 😬

[Therese · Rating 5 out of 5]

if nobody got me, i know thick non-fiction books following a mildly unsympathetic family to the bitter end around the turn of the century got me

[Brittany · Rating 2 out of 5]

Too long to finish but very interesting! This book summarized nicely: The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia

[Diana Stevan · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked up this book because my grandfather fought in the Tsar's army during World War I and I wanted to know more about the Tsar, his wife, and his family who were eventually executed by the Bolsheviks. This is a very hefty read, close to 700 pages. The author used the letters and diaries of those in the royal family as well those of the people who knew them. It's a stunning read. I was surprised to learn how religious the royal family was, and how much their faith dictated their behaviour. It was also surprising how ignorant they were as well about the people under their rule. How they could continue to live so lavishly when the majority of people were just getting by is hard to fathom. But we are living in a time today, when that kind of wealth still exists and those who live in luxury are blinded to the plights of others. Fascinating story well told.

[Maja - BibliophiliaDK ✨ · Rating 5 out of 5]

The last Tsar family and the Russian revolution have always fascinated me, so I already had perceptions of every family member and of all the event before reading this book. All I can say is that I was proven exactly right in every aspect. To me, the greatest problem in Russia in the early 20th century, was Alix. After reading this book and especially the part after the beginning of WWI I have confirmation that she indeed was the root of all evil. And now I like her even less. Of course Nicholas was also an idiot for listening to her, but just imagine if he had married somebody else. How different wouldn't history have turned out?