Rise of the Romanovs

by Vasili Klyuchevsky, Liliana Archibald (Translator)

A dynasty does not die easily or gracefully. Intrigue, assassination, power struggles, and violence dance right up to its final gasp -- until a new dynasty replaces it. Husband to five wives, a brutal madman, and murderer of his eldest and favorite son, Ivan the Terrible left the throne of Russia in 1583 in the hands of his imbecile son, Fedor, and a council of regents. Horror preceded Ivan's death; blood fights for control followed it. Little has been written about the seething pre-Petrine period in Russian hisotry. Glossed over is the phrenetic schism between the Greek and Russian rites; the expansive consumption of territories; the fetid, self-righteous intellectual climate; the entrenchment of serfdom through grinding taxation; the jealous reshaping of power; and the contempt for anything non-Russian. Klyuchevsky's RISE OF THE ROMANOVS recreates this tormented era and inserts a key piece in the pattern that led to the Russian Revolution.

371 pages, Hardcover

Published January 1, 1970