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The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution 1825-1917
Exactly 175 years ago, on the Senate Square in St. Petersburg, a failed uprising ignited a process that would, one red October, finally sweep the autocracy away. The Shadow of the Winter Palace recounts an extraordinary century of Russian history, a politically tempestuous time that was also a Golden Age of intellectual and artistic achievement -- the century of Dostoyevsky and Tolstoy, of Rimsky-Korsakov and Tchaikovsky. A master stylist and a distinguished historian, Edward Crankshaw limns dazzling portraits of the czars, the revolutionaries, and a host of other unforgettable characters -- and provides a riveting, sweeping history "jam-packed with information about the past and implications for the present" (Atlantic Monthly) .
440 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1976
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About the author
Edward Crankshaw
70 books13 followersEdward Crankshaw (3 January 1909 – 30 November 1984), was a British writer, translator and commentator on Soviet affairs.
Born in London, Crankshaw was educated in the Nonconformist public school, Bishop's Stortford College, Hertfordshire, England. He started working as a journalist for a few months at The Times. In the 1930s he lived in Vienna, Austria, teaching English and learning German. He witnessed Adolf Hitler's Austro-German union in 1938, and predicted the Second World War while living there.
In 1940 Crankshaw was contacted by the Secret Intelligence Service because of his knowledge of German. During World War II Crankshaw served as a 'Y' (Signals Intelligence) officer in the British Army. From 1941 to 1943 he was assigned to the British Military Mission in Moscow, where he served initially as an Army 'Y' specialist and later as the accredited representative of the British 'Y' services, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Following a breakdown in 'Y' cooperation with the Soviet General Staff in December 1942, the British 'Y' Board recalled Crankshaw to London in February 1943. In May he was assigned to Bletchley Park, where he served as a liaison officer on matters pertaining to Russia.
From 1947 to 1968 he worked for the British newspaper The Observer. He died in 1984 in Hawkhurst, Kent.
Crankshaw wrote around 40 books on Austrian, (Vienna; Vienna, the Image of a Culture in Decline; Fall of the House of Habsburg; Gestapo. Instrument of Tyranny; Maria Theresa; Bismarck; The Habsburgs: a dynasty...) and Russian subjects, (Britain and Russia; Putting up with the Russians; Tolstoy: The making of a novelist; Russia without Stalin; The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825–1917; Khrushchev; Khrushchev Remembers; The New Cold War, Moscow vs. Pekin; preface to Grigory Klimov's The Terror Machine).
(source: wikipedia)
Born in London, Crankshaw was educated in the Nonconformist public school, Bishop's Stortford College, Hertfordshire, England. He started working as a journalist for a few months at The Times. In the 1930s he lived in Vienna, Austria, teaching English and learning German. He witnessed Adolf Hitler's Austro-German union in 1938, and predicted the Second World War while living there.
In 1940 Crankshaw was contacted by the Secret Intelligence Service because of his knowledge of German. During World War II Crankshaw served as a 'Y' (Signals Intelligence) officer in the British Army. From 1941 to 1943 he was assigned to the British Military Mission in Moscow, where he served initially as an Army 'Y' specialist and later as the accredited representative of the British 'Y' services, rising to the rank of Lieutenant-Colonel. Following a breakdown in 'Y' cooperation with the Soviet General Staff in December 1942, the British 'Y' Board recalled Crankshaw to London in February 1943. In May he was assigned to Bletchley Park, where he served as a liaison officer on matters pertaining to Russia.
From 1947 to 1968 he worked for the British newspaper The Observer. He died in 1984 in Hawkhurst, Kent.
Crankshaw wrote around 40 books on Austrian, (Vienna; Vienna, the Image of a Culture in Decline; Fall of the House of Habsburg; Gestapo. Instrument of Tyranny; Maria Theresa; Bismarck; The Habsburgs: a dynasty...) and Russian subjects, (Britain and Russia; Putting up with the Russians; Tolstoy: The making of a novelist; Russia without Stalin; The Shadow of the Winter Palace: Russia's Drift to Revolution, 1825–1917; Khrushchev; Khrushchev Remembers; The New Cold War, Moscow vs. Pekin; preface to Grigory Klimov's The Terror Machine).
(source: wikipedia)
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 37 reviews
August 30, 2015
There was no proper drop, only stools to be kicked away, and the stools were too low for a quick kill.
A friend of mine worked at University and saw a stack of copies being remaindered; he purchased these for our literature club (samizdat) and I duly devoured it. Crankshaw may appear to be a determinist per the Saga Rus but it is more nuanced than such. This is a remarkable text.
A friend of mine worked at University and saw a stack of copies being remaindered; he purchased these for our literature club (samizdat) and I duly devoured it. Crankshaw may appear to be a determinist per the Saga Rus but it is more nuanced than such. This is a remarkable text.
April 25, 2012
If Robert Massie, in his splendid biography of Catherine the Great, loves her too much and is too uncritical, the same cannot be said of Edward Crankshaw, who likes the Romanovs very little. Even when he recounts some important things they accomplished, he allows them no credit and finds a way to disparage what they achieved and/or their part in it. Yet, he is never mean-spirited as is that other journalist, G.J. Meyer, who discredits everything any of the Tudor monarchs accomplished.
Crankshaw's aim, as his title announces, is to trace the sure and steady decline of absolutism, as embedded in the Tsars, to their overthrow by the peasants, the middle class, and the intelligentsia, as led by the Bolsheviks. He begins with Nicholas I and concludes with Nicholas II. In between, we get two Alexanders. Each Tsar had he been more able, or more resolute, or had the sense to retain better advisers might have changed the course of Russian history. But they were none of these things and did none of these things. Some were more able than others; some more reform-minded than others but none was constant in seeing through any of the most desperately needed reforms, especially not those that conflicted with the power of the monarchy, and some were positively reactionary. Perhaps none was truly evil. Unless being incompetent is evil. All believed with religious conviction in absolute monarchism. They were blind to what was happening all around them. They often engaged in wars they could not afford and usually could have avoided. Meanwhile their peasants starved to pay for the wars and lost their lives trying to win them.
Those who did not lose their all in war fared little better. Industrialism was changing the economy and the working classes of Russia but reforms were not commensurate with those changes. This once proud and mighty nation was collapsing from within by the time the Bolsheviks finally stamped out absolute monarchism to establish the absolutism of the state/the proletariat. Yet, during the period covered in this book, the last century of Romanov rule,there was an enormous flowering of Russian music and literature and other of the arts. Russia produced Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev,Tchaikovsky,Chekhov, Rimsky-Korsakov,to name just a few. And the Russian ballet. It was especially interesting to read about Tolstoy before he became a saint! During this period, Russia also produced Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and others. It seems that the course their lives took was not inevitable but that they rode the tide of events.
Crankshaw's book is no dull recitation of facts. Crankshaw is opinionated and offers his opinions freely. He is often hilariously blunt; often subtly ironic. His sentence structure is frequently hard to follow, but it's always worth it to pause to try to figure out what he's saying. He writes with authority. I liked this book a lot. Learned a lot.
Crankshaw's aim, as his title announces, is to trace the sure and steady decline of absolutism, as embedded in the Tsars, to their overthrow by the peasants, the middle class, and the intelligentsia, as led by the Bolsheviks. He begins with Nicholas I and concludes with Nicholas II. In between, we get two Alexanders. Each Tsar had he been more able, or more resolute, or had the sense to retain better advisers might have changed the course of Russian history. But they were none of these things and did none of these things. Some were more able than others; some more reform-minded than others but none was constant in seeing through any of the most desperately needed reforms, especially not those that conflicted with the power of the monarchy, and some were positively reactionary. Perhaps none was truly evil. Unless being incompetent is evil. All believed with religious conviction in absolute monarchism. They were blind to what was happening all around them. They often engaged in wars they could not afford and usually could have avoided. Meanwhile their peasants starved to pay for the wars and lost their lives trying to win them.
Those who did not lose their all in war fared little better. Industrialism was changing the economy and the working classes of Russia but reforms were not commensurate with those changes. This once proud and mighty nation was collapsing from within by the time the Bolsheviks finally stamped out absolute monarchism to establish the absolutism of the state/the proletariat. Yet, during the period covered in this book, the last century of Romanov rule,there was an enormous flowering of Russian music and literature and other of the arts. Russia produced Pushkin, Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Turgenev,Tchaikovsky,Chekhov, Rimsky-Korsakov,to name just a few. And the Russian ballet. It was especially interesting to read about Tolstoy before he became a saint! During this period, Russia also produced Lenin, Trotsky, Stalin and others. It seems that the course their lives took was not inevitable but that they rode the tide of events.
Crankshaw's book is no dull recitation of facts. Crankshaw is opinionated and offers his opinions freely. He is often hilariously blunt; often subtly ironic. His sentence structure is frequently hard to follow, but it's always worth it to pause to try to figure out what he's saying. He writes with authority. I liked this book a lot. Learned a lot.
February 8, 2017
There are certain kinds of history books that tell you as much about their author as about their subject. In the worst cases, you learn almost nothing about history except the historian's opinions of it, but in the better cases the conflict of interpretation between the facts and the historian's narrative creates a view which is more sophisticated and nuanced than either a plain chronicle or a pure editorial would be. This is one of the better cases.
The Shadow of the Winter Palace is the story of the last four Tsars of Russia: Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II. Conveniently, these four reigns are bookended by two different attempts to remove the Tsar: the failed Decembrist revolt of 1825, and the more successful Bolshevik revolution of 1917. But it's not merely about these men and their revolts, because the economic and social changes which occurred in Russia during this period are a mirror of the changes across Europe as a whole, and the end of Tsarist Russia created one of the empires which dominated the 20th Century. But Russia is a funhouse mirror, not a straight reflection, with all of the features of the Western European revolts either squashed to illegibility or expanded grotesquely.
This is where Crankshaw's own perspective becomes important, because Crankshaw is a Whig. In an early chapter of the book he writes this:
This might be the clearest statement of the Whig view of history that I've ever seen in a history book. And this conflict drives the action of history in Crankshaw's telling. There is a zeitgeist, a spirit of the age, which drove all of Europe, including Russia, in the direction of greater liberty and equality and away from autocracy. But in the case of Russia, the zeitgeist was constantly frustrated by the volkgeist, the spirit of the Russian people themselves, who could never quite get with the program. Crankshaw complains earnestly of the inability of the Russians to produce moderates. It seemed that every Russian leader and politician was either a reactionary or a revolutionary, and solid, reliable liberals were seldom to be found and wielded little influence. And so the history of Russia in the 19th century was largely one of chaotic oscillation between autocratic absolutism and terroristic revolutionary violence. Crankshaw repeatedly laments the lack of any tradition of self-rule in Russia, and this lack is what he ultimately blames on Russia's failure to develop any secure democratic institutions, lurching rather from the Tsars to the Communists, whom Crankshaw clearly sees as two sides of the same coin.
The story, though, is brilliantly told. Crankshaw is a crackling good prose stylist, offering up beautifully evocative paragraphs like this one, about a murder that occurred during the Decembrist revolt:
And another, describing Count Arakcheyev who served under three Tsars:
The whole book is like that, an exhilarating read with heroes and villains (but mostly villains) sketched in vivid language and bright colors.
The story begins with the accession of Nicholas I, which triggered the short-lived Decembrist revolt. Nicholas was disgusted by the necessity of putting down a revolt at the very beginning of his reign, but he handled the matter as he handled everything, with military precision. Crankshaw condemns him as a reactionary, which he was: he firmly opposed any attempt to deviate from the principle of Tsarist autocracy, and what reforms he permitted were largely procedural reforms meant to make the civil service more efficient. And yet, on nearly every other measure he was quite successful. During his reign Russia began the process of industrialization, grew in prosperity, and was secure on all of its borders. Only a few dark spots stand out: he failed to undertake necessary agricultural reforms, and was sluggish in getting railroads and factories built, which had long-lasting effects on Russia's economic development. And his military did very poorly in the Crimean War, the last military encounter before his death, which caused his reign to go out under a cloud.
His son, Alexander II, was an incompetent reformer. Both elements of this description come through very clearly. He emancipated the serfs, accomplishing one of the major goals of frustrated reformers from his father's generation, but he did so in such a way that many of them were worse off than before, and he gained little popular support for it. He created the zemstvo system which was supposed to introduce local representative government to the provinces, but the zemstvos lacked necessary authority to do very much, and instead became sources of resentment and occasional revolutionary fervor. The latter part of his reign was marked by a wave of terroristic violence that resulted in the deaths of dozens of government officials, culminating in his own assassination. This was the thanks he got for attempting to reform the system, and his reign in contrast with his father's set the theme for the 19th century in Russia: the reactionaries die of natural causes, while the reformers are killed by the radicals they try to appease.
Alexander III succeeded his father, and pursued policies more like those of the reactionary Nicholas I. And in this he was remarkably successful. With great efficiency he put down the revolutionary elements which had bloodied his father's reign, and reigned over a period of remarkable peace and stability. But Crankshaw doesn't much like him: he titles the chapter on Alexander III "The Peace of the Grave", because he had no interest in continuing his father's programme of reform. And yet, given what happened to the reformers, it's hard to say that he was wrong to do so, as his reign is by most objective measures the most stable and successful of any of the Tsars after Nicholas I. Alas, he died of illness after a brief and uneventful reign, giving the reigns of the country over to his son, Nicholas II, the last.
Nicholas II was nothing like his namesake. Crankshaw depicts him as constantly incompetent and out of his depth, relatively disinterested in ruling, and lacking the strength of will to balance the contrary forces of reaction and revolution within Russia. A great number of major reforms happened under his reign, but Nicholas himself took almost no role in directing them, and they failed to do much to prevent the rise of revolutionary fervor. As the situation in Russia grew more extreme, Nicholas withdrew from active government, giving more and more power to his ministers. And so it should not be surprising that during WWI there was a revolt in St. Petersburg, led by a coalition of revolutionary groups. Nicholas abdicated.
Crankshaw ends the book abruptly here, not covering the last several months of the Tsar's life. This seemed like an odd choice at first, but defensible. What later happened to Nicholas and his family was a personal tragedy, but he political life of the Tsars ended with the abdication. The farce of Nicholas II's reign turned, a few months later, into one of the most famous murders of the 20th century, a contrast which seems all too fitting as an epitaph for the Tsars.
The Shadow of the Winter Palace is the story of the last four Tsars of Russia: Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II. Conveniently, these four reigns are bookended by two different attempts to remove the Tsar: the failed Decembrist revolt of 1825, and the more successful Bolshevik revolution of 1917. But it's not merely about these men and their revolts, because the economic and social changes which occurred in Russia during this period are a mirror of the changes across Europe as a whole, and the end of Tsarist Russia created one of the empires which dominated the 20th Century. But Russia is a funhouse mirror, not a straight reflection, with all of the features of the Western European revolts either squashed to illegibility or expanded grotesquely.
This is where Crankshaw's own perspective becomes important, because Crankshaw is a Whig. In an early chapter of the book he writes this:
The development of other monarchies at least reflected the running conflict between the will of the monarch and the expressed ideas and demands of the highly articulate interest groups over which he presided. Thus there was a long story of compromise and adjustment, expressing itself in constant movement and manoeuvre, and tending always, now rapidly, now slowly, towards one clearly recognisable end: the visible broadening of the base of a once feudal society to take account of the needs and aspirations of a steadily broadening spectrum of the subject peoples. This dynamic conflict was weak in Imperial Russia.... Thus there was no gradual and organic evolution, no public preparation for inevitable change.
This might be the clearest statement of the Whig view of history that I've ever seen in a history book. And this conflict drives the action of history in Crankshaw's telling. There is a zeitgeist, a spirit of the age, which drove all of Europe, including Russia, in the direction of greater liberty and equality and away from autocracy. But in the case of Russia, the zeitgeist was constantly frustrated by the volkgeist, the spirit of the Russian people themselves, who could never quite get with the program. Crankshaw complains earnestly of the inability of the Russians to produce moderates. It seemed that every Russian leader and politician was either a reactionary or a revolutionary, and solid, reliable liberals were seldom to be found and wielded little influence. And so the history of Russia in the 19th century was largely one of chaotic oscillation between autocratic absolutism and terroristic revolutionary violence. Crankshaw repeatedly laments the lack of any tradition of self-rule in Russia, and this lack is what he ultimately blames on Russia's failure to develop any secure democratic institutions, lurching rather from the Tsars to the Communists, whom Crankshaw clearly sees as two sides of the same coin.
The story, though, is brilliantly told. Crankshaw is a crackling good prose stylist, offering up beautifully evocative paragraphs like this one, about a murder that occurred during the Decembrist revolt:
Quickly realizing he could do no good, Miloradovich prepared to return the way he had come, but as he turned his horse he was shot in the back and killed. The man who did the shooting was a civilian, Peter Kakhovsky, a gifted intellectual of extreme purity of motive in whom the conviction of the necessity of regicide burned with a gem-like flame. Determined to kill, expecting to die, this brilliant and terrible apparition, his slender form bundled up in a sheepskin coat, his delicate features surmounted by a shabby top hat, shot to kill with that indiscriminate ruthlessness which was later to characterise a whole generation of revolutionary terrorists. If he could not yet murder the Tsar, he would do the next best thing.
And another, describing Count Arakcheyev who served under three Tsars:
This dire and sinister creature, the only man who knew how to manage [Tsar] Paul, was an army officer, then in his late twenties, who had been dismissed from a staff appointment for excessive brutality and an uncontrollable temper: a noteworthy achievement in the Russia of that time. He was said to have bitten off the ear of a recruit on the parade ground in one of his frequent rages. But he had a virtue: he was loyal to his master, absolutely and unspeculatively as a savage police-dog is loyal to its handler.
The whole book is like that, an exhilarating read with heroes and villains (but mostly villains) sketched in vivid language and bright colors.
The story begins with the accession of Nicholas I, which triggered the short-lived Decembrist revolt. Nicholas was disgusted by the necessity of putting down a revolt at the very beginning of his reign, but he handled the matter as he handled everything, with military precision. Crankshaw condemns him as a reactionary, which he was: he firmly opposed any attempt to deviate from the principle of Tsarist autocracy, and what reforms he permitted were largely procedural reforms meant to make the civil service more efficient. And yet, on nearly every other measure he was quite successful. During his reign Russia began the process of industrialization, grew in prosperity, and was secure on all of its borders. Only a few dark spots stand out: he failed to undertake necessary agricultural reforms, and was sluggish in getting railroads and factories built, which had long-lasting effects on Russia's economic development. And his military did very poorly in the Crimean War, the last military encounter before his death, which caused his reign to go out under a cloud.
His son, Alexander II, was an incompetent reformer. Both elements of this description come through very clearly. He emancipated the serfs, accomplishing one of the major goals of frustrated reformers from his father's generation, but he did so in such a way that many of them were worse off than before, and he gained little popular support for it. He created the zemstvo system which was supposed to introduce local representative government to the provinces, but the zemstvos lacked necessary authority to do very much, and instead became sources of resentment and occasional revolutionary fervor. The latter part of his reign was marked by a wave of terroristic violence that resulted in the deaths of dozens of government officials, culminating in his own assassination. This was the thanks he got for attempting to reform the system, and his reign in contrast with his father's set the theme for the 19th century in Russia: the reactionaries die of natural causes, while the reformers are killed by the radicals they try to appease.
Alexander III succeeded his father, and pursued policies more like those of the reactionary Nicholas I. And in this he was remarkably successful. With great efficiency he put down the revolutionary elements which had bloodied his father's reign, and reigned over a period of remarkable peace and stability. But Crankshaw doesn't much like him: he titles the chapter on Alexander III "The Peace of the Grave", because he had no interest in continuing his father's programme of reform. And yet, given what happened to the reformers, it's hard to say that he was wrong to do so, as his reign is by most objective measures the most stable and successful of any of the Tsars after Nicholas I. Alas, he died of illness after a brief and uneventful reign, giving the reigns of the country over to his son, Nicholas II, the last.
Nicholas II was nothing like his namesake. Crankshaw depicts him as constantly incompetent and out of his depth, relatively disinterested in ruling, and lacking the strength of will to balance the contrary forces of reaction and revolution within Russia. A great number of major reforms happened under his reign, but Nicholas himself took almost no role in directing them, and they failed to do much to prevent the rise of revolutionary fervor. As the situation in Russia grew more extreme, Nicholas withdrew from active government, giving more and more power to his ministers. And so it should not be surprising that during WWI there was a revolt in St. Petersburg, led by a coalition of revolutionary groups. Nicholas abdicated.
Crankshaw ends the book abruptly here, not covering the last several months of the Tsar's life. This seemed like an odd choice at first, but defensible. What later happened to Nicholas and his family was a personal tragedy, but he political life of the Tsars ended with the abdication. The farce of Nicholas II's reign turned, a few months later, into one of the most famous murders of the 20th century, a contrast which seems all too fitting as an epitaph for the Tsars.
January 23, 2026
Reread: Still 5 stars. Agree with historian John Lawrence that it is almost bizarrely obsessive in its criticisms of Russia & the Romanovs. It is, as another reviewer notes, overwhelmingly Whiggish and subsequently unimaginative about the inescapable contradictions of permanent liberal atomization: Russia's problems simply come from not adopting British parliamentarianism. This is absurdly reductionist. But the disagreements, even if the assumptions are not fully acknowledged, simply cannot overshadow the depth of perception and wide-ranging analysis. It will add perspective to anyone interested in Russia or simply modern-global history, and Crankshaw is a kind man with a feeling heart to the suffering of the workers, peasants, and soldiers.
Original:
One need not agree with all of Crankshaw's opinions to find this book beautiful, perceptive historical writing. I found his thoughts on Nicholas I to be intriguing; he spends so much time telling us how awful Nicholas was, but the details he shares make Nicholas's reign seem like a rare moment of stability which set the stage for all of Alexander II's reforms. I suspect he sympathized with Nicholas more than he was able to articulate. Additionally, Crankshaw's description of Stolypin as a cold, gentle, sad man standing alone between Russia and chaotic bloodshed is terribly affecting. Crankshaw made these figures glow more than any class on Russia I've taken, or any book on it that I've ever read. I'm very grateful I stumbled across it.
Original:
One need not agree with all of Crankshaw's opinions to find this book beautiful, perceptive historical writing. I found his thoughts on Nicholas I to be intriguing; he spends so much time telling us how awful Nicholas was, but the details he shares make Nicholas's reign seem like a rare moment of stability which set the stage for all of Alexander II's reforms. I suspect he sympathized with Nicholas more than he was able to articulate. Additionally, Crankshaw's description of Stolypin as a cold, gentle, sad man standing alone between Russia and chaotic bloodshed is terribly affecting. Crankshaw made these figures glow more than any class on Russia I've taken, or any book on it that I've ever read. I'm very grateful I stumbled across it.
April 7, 2018
This book will go permanently on my bookshelf, not least because no one else will want a book filled with highlights. Forget Churchill's infamous quote about Russia being incomprehensible. It is comprehensible - Mr. Crenshaw even quotes a few British diplomats who saw all too clearly the desperate need for reform. Which makes the book a very depressing read - you already know how it all ends.
But read it you should. If you happen to hold some of the more simplistic beliefs about the world and/or Russia, Mr. Crenshaw will soon disabuse you of them. Russia truly is where East meets West, and many things that we consider "natural" or "normal" simply are not in Russia. For example, reading this book convinced me that political self-rule can only follow from PERSONAL self-rule. More directly: not everyone is ready to be under a participatory form of government. This fact should weigh heavily on anyone who is convinced we need a war with Russia. We may find the Russian government distasteful for many reasons. But there is the distinct possibility that Russia has exactly the government it can handle right now, and trying to change it by force could be catastrophic, not least for the people we believe we are helping.
But back to our story. Russia had a tiger by the tail, but the Tsars were too out of touch to grasp that fact. A small number of elite landowners, a small number of middle class, and an almost numberless sea of serfs. Russia was so backwards that a serf could move to the city, start a factory, make millions industrializing Russia, and STILL be a serf, owing his "owner" allegiance and financial support. Even the nobility had refused self-government, so there was little hope of progress. While the rest of Europe was moving fitfully towards rule of law instead of rule by tyrants, Russia clung to its old ways.
And what were those old ways? Serfs belonging to country communes, stuck in a hopelessly inefficient agrarian economy, under the control of the village elders and the local nobility. (poof goes another myth - that we would all be better off in a little commune village). But it couldn't continue. Oh, some Russian ministers saw the issue, and tried to start industrialization (poof goes the myth that Stalin industrialized Russia), but it was state-run, under the thumb of government bureaucrats, and simply involved serfs periodically moving wholesale from the land to the factory, during the "off-season", still subservient to their "owners." There was no real growth or innovation.
And while Mr. Crenshaw has little use for the Tsars or most of their ministers, he also has little respect for the revolutionaries exiled in various parts of Europe. Because while they saw the need for change, they could not see that rule of law was the solution. They looked around Western Europe and concluded that the various forms of self-rule that were evolving were just as much failures as autocracy. They pointed to the squalor and misery of the Industrial Revolution and decided that Russia needed total revolution. Towards what Utopian end they weren't very clear - just not what Europe had. However Mr. Crenshaw neatly cuts their arguments to ribbons: all humans are imperfect, therefore all human institutions are imperfect. What's most important is that we are working towards the ideal, not that we actually every arrive there. It's the best we can hope for in this world. (Poof, poof, more myths blown). But Russia's revolutionaries let perfection become the enemy of good, until they produced someone of true evil: Lenin, a man with a messiah complex.
But what makes the tragedy of Russia really sting is that at the 11th hour, real reform DID happen. Little known fact: Russia's economy in the 1890s was the fastest growing on earth. A Duma came into existence in 1905, and for the first time men began to learn to take responsibility, not just for themselves, but for a mighty country. The communes were abolished, and agriculture reached productivity levels not seen again until the advent of tractors. The revolutionaries despaired. But it was too little, too late. Russia needed another generation of peace, not WWI, to come into the modern age. Instead, men who believed any crime was justified in order to achieve power seized control, and tens of millions died because of it. It should be a lesson to our own revolutionaries.
So, read the book because of the lessons we can learn, and to gain something we seem to need right now: a new sympathy and respect for Russia.
But read it you should. If you happen to hold some of the more simplistic beliefs about the world and/or Russia, Mr. Crenshaw will soon disabuse you of them. Russia truly is where East meets West, and many things that we consider "natural" or "normal" simply are not in Russia. For example, reading this book convinced me that political self-rule can only follow from PERSONAL self-rule. More directly: not everyone is ready to be under a participatory form of government. This fact should weigh heavily on anyone who is convinced we need a war with Russia. We may find the Russian government distasteful for many reasons. But there is the distinct possibility that Russia has exactly the government it can handle right now, and trying to change it by force could be catastrophic, not least for the people we believe we are helping.
But back to our story. Russia had a tiger by the tail, but the Tsars were too out of touch to grasp that fact. A small number of elite landowners, a small number of middle class, and an almost numberless sea of serfs. Russia was so backwards that a serf could move to the city, start a factory, make millions industrializing Russia, and STILL be a serf, owing his "owner" allegiance and financial support. Even the nobility had refused self-government, so there was little hope of progress. While the rest of Europe was moving fitfully towards rule of law instead of rule by tyrants, Russia clung to its old ways.
And what were those old ways? Serfs belonging to country communes, stuck in a hopelessly inefficient agrarian economy, under the control of the village elders and the local nobility. (poof goes another myth - that we would all be better off in a little commune village). But it couldn't continue. Oh, some Russian ministers saw the issue, and tried to start industrialization (poof goes the myth that Stalin industrialized Russia), but it was state-run, under the thumb of government bureaucrats, and simply involved serfs periodically moving wholesale from the land to the factory, during the "off-season", still subservient to their "owners." There was no real growth or innovation.
And while Mr. Crenshaw has little use for the Tsars or most of their ministers, he also has little respect for the revolutionaries exiled in various parts of Europe. Because while they saw the need for change, they could not see that rule of law was the solution. They looked around Western Europe and concluded that the various forms of self-rule that were evolving were just as much failures as autocracy. They pointed to the squalor and misery of the Industrial Revolution and decided that Russia needed total revolution. Towards what Utopian end they weren't very clear - just not what Europe had. However Mr. Crenshaw neatly cuts their arguments to ribbons: all humans are imperfect, therefore all human institutions are imperfect. What's most important is that we are working towards the ideal, not that we actually every arrive there. It's the best we can hope for in this world. (Poof, poof, more myths blown). But Russia's revolutionaries let perfection become the enemy of good, until they produced someone of true evil: Lenin, a man with a messiah complex.
But what makes the tragedy of Russia really sting is that at the 11th hour, real reform DID happen. Little known fact: Russia's economy in the 1890s was the fastest growing on earth. A Duma came into existence in 1905, and for the first time men began to learn to take responsibility, not just for themselves, but for a mighty country. The communes were abolished, and agriculture reached productivity levels not seen again until the advent of tractors. The revolutionaries despaired. But it was too little, too late. Russia needed another generation of peace, not WWI, to come into the modern age. Instead, men who believed any crime was justified in order to achieve power seized control, and tens of millions died because of it. It should be a lesson to our own revolutionaries.
So, read the book because of the lessons we can learn, and to gain something we seem to need right now: a new sympathy and respect for Russia.
April 30, 2020
I really didn’t know a whole lot about this book going in and this really wasn’t what I expected. However, it was an interesting retelling from a different perspective, though I might not agree with everything the author claims-and he clearly has an agenda. I thought this would be a book focused on the last tsars but they faded into the periphery compared to the artists and revolutionaries dominating the landscape at this time. It’s sad to see just how many times history could have changed and a better outcome been achieved. I probably wouldn’t have picked up this book on my own had I knew that it wasn’t really personal biographies, but I’m sort of glad that I did.
February 10, 2013
It's rare for me to arrive at a consensus about what I'm reading, until after I've finished. As it turned out, though, it only took me 40 pages to come to a conclusion about The Shadow of the Winter Palace. After Crankshaw first castigates the Muscovite boyars for inviting the untrammeled accession of the Romanovs in 1613, and then goes on to describe the autocracy as a system where Tsar and people each "brutalized the other", my impression of ivory-tower ignorance on the author's part was set. This malevolent tone and lack of sympathy for the subject matter characterize the whole work. What should be an impartial look at Imperial Russia at the height of its powers focuses instead on a seemingly relentless progression towards collapse. The subtitle is not just a descriptor, it is a thesis; the Revolution of 1917, to Crankshaw, is a foregone conclusion. From here, everything else falls into place. The character assassinations of Tsars, bureaucrats, generals, intellectuals and revolutionaries combines with the jaded critique of Russian society and its institutions, all with the view of the triumph of the Bolsheviks in mind. Most annoying of all: flowing beneath the narrative is the thinly veiled elitist lament, "if only Russia were more like the West, none of this would have happened". With hindsight it's easy to make such judgments, and during the Cold War it may have been kosher to portray Imperial Russia as imperfect Stalinism; however, modern readers have justly rejected such forced comparisons.
Despite these flaws, the book is still highly readable. Indeed, buoyed up by such fascinating material as Russian history, it's hard for it not to be. What's most interesting is tracing the development of political thought in Russia, both revolutionary and reactionary: from the Decembrists of 1825, to the Pan-Slavists, to the popular terrorists of The People's Will, and down to Lenin's militant socialists. While it's certainly a regret that the autocracy failed to institutionalize the opposition of these groups, the fact shouldn't cast a complete shadow over the legacy of Imperial Russia.
Despite these flaws, the book is still highly readable. Indeed, buoyed up by such fascinating material as Russian history, it's hard for it not to be. What's most interesting is tracing the development of political thought in Russia, both revolutionary and reactionary: from the Decembrists of 1825, to the Pan-Slavists, to the popular terrorists of The People's Will, and down to Lenin's militant socialists. While it's certainly a regret that the autocracy failed to institutionalize the opposition of these groups, the fact shouldn't cast a complete shadow over the legacy of Imperial Russia.
July 27, 2013
This is a popular history of the revolutionary ferment in Russia from the Decembrist Revolt in 1825 to the revolutions of 1917. While neither radical nor scholarly, Crankshaw provides an engagingly accessible introduction to the period--so good, in fact, that I've given copies of this book away as well-received gifts.
July 25, 2016
A witty and wide-ranging study of Russia's drift to revolution from the 1825 Decembrist uprising to the final downfall in WWI. Mr. Crankshaw has drawn in the cultural influences on the Russian intelligentsia through those years -- Dostoyevsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Mendeleyev -- and their influence and despair. (Mr. Crankshaw notes Mendeleyev's removal from his university professorship by the Minister of Education, a political hack, and the scientist's subsequent rescue by the Finance Minister, Witte). More and more intellectuals turn to revolutionary plotting or simple apathy while Russia's economy and military struggle to catch up to Europe and ultimately fail.
You'll find vivid personal portraits all through the story -- the Tsars, of course, Nicholas I, Alexander II and III -- but also some figures struggling heroically against the ultimate failure: Gen. Totleben at the siege of Sevastopol in 1854; Gen. Loris-Melikov attempting to reform the doomed tsardom of Alexander II in 1880; prime ministers Witte and Stolypin in their time working against the clock to industrialize a sullen and balky nation. And the revolutionaries: the Decembrists; the young students-turned-assassin stalking Alexander II; intellectual rebels like Herzen and Chernyshevsky.
All this puts an 80-year perspective on the events leading to the 1905 revolution and the ultimate, completed downfall in 1917. His bibliographic comments on other sources -- including Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra -- are well worth reading as well: sharp, wide-ranging and with the same depth of perspective. Well worth reading in light of present-day Russian history.
(Footnote, 2015: It's interesting that President Putin, even before his reconquest of the Crimea, had a portrait of Tsar Nicholas I in his offices and has apparently been trying to re-establish that Tsar's reputation.)
You'll find vivid personal portraits all through the story -- the Tsars, of course, Nicholas I, Alexander II and III -- but also some figures struggling heroically against the ultimate failure: Gen. Totleben at the siege of Sevastopol in 1854; Gen. Loris-Melikov attempting to reform the doomed tsardom of Alexander II in 1880; prime ministers Witte and Stolypin in their time working against the clock to industrialize a sullen and balky nation. And the revolutionaries: the Decembrists; the young students-turned-assassin stalking Alexander II; intellectual rebels like Herzen and Chernyshevsky.
All this puts an 80-year perspective on the events leading to the 1905 revolution and the ultimate, completed downfall in 1917. His bibliographic comments on other sources -- including Robert Massie's Nicholas and Alexandra -- are well worth reading as well: sharp, wide-ranging and with the same depth of perspective. Well worth reading in light of present-day Russian history.
(Footnote, 2015: It's interesting that President Putin, even before his reconquest of the Crimea, had a portrait of Tsar Nicholas I in his offices and has apparently been trying to re-establish that Tsar's reputation.)
September 1, 2022
Author expects everyone to immediately recognize and understand his references.
February 28, 2014
Embarking on 2-3 months of solid engagement with the Russians, this book is my first stop on the way to Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky and Vasily Grossman. It basically takes in the 90 years that preceded Bruce Lincoln's book on the October Revolution and the Civil War - i.e. the short 19th century from the failed Decembrist uprising to the fall of the Romanovs.
We are blessed when it comes to fluent narrators of Russian history - Crankshaw is almost as fine a stylist as Bruce Lincoln was. His attitude is certainly a lot more judgmental, but given that this book was written in the mid 70s, at the height of the Brezhnevite stagnation, the author certainly has a lot to be judgmental about!
The downfall of the Decembrists is dealt with early on, and Crankshaw is doing a good job so far of laying out in detail the nature of Nicholas' centralized autocracy, the dead air that enveloped Russian society, the hopeless stupidity pervading every facet of economics and 'politics' in an absolute dictatorship led by a barely-average brain...
We are blessed when it comes to fluent narrators of Russian history - Crankshaw is almost as fine a stylist as Bruce Lincoln was. His attitude is certainly a lot more judgmental, but given that this book was written in the mid 70s, at the height of the Brezhnevite stagnation, the author certainly has a lot to be judgmental about!
The downfall of the Decembrists is dealt with early on, and Crankshaw is doing a good job so far of laying out in detail the nature of Nicholas' centralized autocracy, the dead air that enveloped Russian society, the hopeless stupidity pervading every facet of economics and 'politics' in an absolute dictatorship led by a barely-average brain...
December 29, 2008
Pretty much what it says on the tin.
I'm a bit ambivalent – it's quite readable (and appropriately painful in places) – but there was also a shocking lack of primary sources. And you can't tell me raging egoists like the Romanovs didn't write letters and diaries, because I'll call you a liar. I might more easily believe a lot of it didn't survive, but this book was a lot more 'an entire century compressed and themed and fabricated into inevitable-feeling order' than I like in my history, and that's partly for a lack of voices other than the historian's.
I'm a bit ambivalent – it's quite readable (and appropriately painful in places) – but there was also a shocking lack of primary sources. And you can't tell me raging egoists like the Romanovs didn't write letters and diaries, because I'll call you a liar. I might more easily believe a lot of it didn't survive, but this book was a lot more 'an entire century compressed and themed and fabricated into inevitable-feeling order' than I like in my history, and that's partly for a lack of voices other than the historian's.
October 22, 2008
Favorite quote from this book: "[I]t might be a condition of life that the ideal must for ever be a dream to be striven for – that, indeed, the very triumph of an ideal must be its undoing." Another great quote: "The key to Alexander [II] is that he had a strong element of cynicism. He was one of those unusual creatures, a truly honest man who does not expect others to be honest."
February 15, 2025
Edward Crankshaw delivers a historical narrative ranging from the Decemberist uprising, a political movement for a constitutional monarchy the likes of which Russia had never seen before, all the way to the end of the Russian Empire with the abdication of Nicholas II. According to Crankshaw, the period between these two revolutionary events was a perpetual tug-of-war, with the long tradition of autocracy struggling to maintain absolute power on one side, and a growing public conscious seeking administrative responsibilities on the other. Assassinations, wars, massacres; industrialization, reforms, corruption; downtrodden peasants and workers, repressed artists and thinkers, incompetent nobles and bureaucracy; all of this sets the stage for the crown's vacillating gains and losses of popular support. As time goes on, and as terror reigns and citizens gain a foothold in government, the book becomes less concerned with the Tsar. Such a marked shift in focus reflects the shift in power from a single central authority to a wider group distinct from the rule of the Romanovs.
The material doubtless intrigues enough to follow for the length of the book, nor does the style fail to sustain attention. Indeed, Crankshaw can sometimes pack so many clarifying clauses into a sentence as to necessitate careful rereading, but this busy structure rewards the attention it demands by broadening the narrative's context in compact form without being too dense. That is to say, it is eminently readable.
On the other hand, the style can be intrusive in unhelpful ways. Crankshaw's ideas, concerning how things were, how they should have gone, or how they would have turned out if another path was taken, are sometimes backed up by the account of events that he gives; other times it's unclear what his assumptions are founded on. This can be a little jarring. He'll chime in with condemnations against figures which gives an emotional flair. This makes reading engaging but also makes me wonder if the writer might have compromised his authenticity to give such a pointed depiction of events. My doubts however are not too serious as to deeply sully the work.
Overall, The Shadow of the Winter Palace insightfully presents a gradual fall of the Russian Empire. The insights, their usefulness and validity, and the extent to which they illuminate the history is up to the reader. For my own part I'm leaving this with a good impression.
The material doubtless intrigues enough to follow for the length of the book, nor does the style fail to sustain attention. Indeed, Crankshaw can sometimes pack so many clarifying clauses into a sentence as to necessitate careful rereading, but this busy structure rewards the attention it demands by broadening the narrative's context in compact form without being too dense. That is to say, it is eminently readable.
On the other hand, the style can be intrusive in unhelpful ways. Crankshaw's ideas, concerning how things were, how they should have gone, or how they would have turned out if another path was taken, are sometimes backed up by the account of events that he gives; other times it's unclear what his assumptions are founded on. This can be a little jarring. He'll chime in with condemnations against figures which gives an emotional flair. This makes reading engaging but also makes me wonder if the writer might have compromised his authenticity to give such a pointed depiction of events. My doubts however are not too serious as to deeply sully the work.
Overall, The Shadow of the Winter Palace insightfully presents a gradual fall of the Russian Empire. The insights, their usefulness and validity, and the extent to which they illuminate the history is up to the reader. For my own part I'm leaving this with a good impression.
October 13, 2022
I can think of no better place to go to understand the current war in Russia than “The Shadow of the Winter Palace” by Edward Crankshaw. In miniscule detail Crankshaw delves into the minutiae and characters and twists and turns of Russia during the fading years of the Romanovs. From the December Revolution to the October Revolution – one hundred years of Russian history, covering the reigns of Alexander I, II and II and Nicolas I and II.
War and revolt. That is what the years of the 1800s meant to Russia. Unlike in England during which those same years saw the first and second industrial revolutions that placed the U.K. as the foremost economy of the world, and built the engine that powered her empire; for Russia that 100 years was a story of the attempts of the tsars to hold onto despotic power, absolute, limitless and without nuance. Against the desperation of the peasants seeking to find a way to be free and to live better lives. And against the efforts of other empires to contain Russia’s attempts at dominion. Wars with the Ottomans and the Austrians and the Germans and the French and the English and the Sicilians and the Persians and the Japanese. 20 years of peace, that’s all that the reformers asked for – but the Tsars would not oblige. The future of Russia would be determined through violence.
We don’t really recognize, in the west, the power of ancient Russia. It was unquestionably the most powerful country in the world – limitless wealth, endless waves of peasant-warriors, territory that never ended, from the Sea of Japan to the Baltic. Size and power, lost in the mists of the north and the deep winter cold Siberia, unknowing and infinitely mystical, awe-inspiring and fearful. But wondrous, exemplified in perfection by the Romanov Tsars, the most wealthy and powerful royal family that Europe ever saw.
Putin’s war is just an extension of this. Stalin inherited the Russian empire at its largest, most powerful state. If one was to consider the Warsaw Pact, Russia’s soviet empire reached from Ulaanbaatar to Warsaw. Putin, by contrast, has inherited Russia at its smallest since perhaps Peter the Great started building. Putin is seeking to build back the empire; and in the spirit of Russia’s hapless rulers, who ranged from detached to wicked, he is willing to sacrifice the peasants for his idea of Russia. And that isn’t new either.
War and revolt. That is what the years of the 1800s meant to Russia. Unlike in England during which those same years saw the first and second industrial revolutions that placed the U.K. as the foremost economy of the world, and built the engine that powered her empire; for Russia that 100 years was a story of the attempts of the tsars to hold onto despotic power, absolute, limitless and without nuance. Against the desperation of the peasants seeking to find a way to be free and to live better lives. And against the efforts of other empires to contain Russia’s attempts at dominion. Wars with the Ottomans and the Austrians and the Germans and the French and the English and the Sicilians and the Persians and the Japanese. 20 years of peace, that’s all that the reformers asked for – but the Tsars would not oblige. The future of Russia would be determined through violence.
We don’t really recognize, in the west, the power of ancient Russia. It was unquestionably the most powerful country in the world – limitless wealth, endless waves of peasant-warriors, territory that never ended, from the Sea of Japan to the Baltic. Size and power, lost in the mists of the north and the deep winter cold Siberia, unknowing and infinitely mystical, awe-inspiring and fearful. But wondrous, exemplified in perfection by the Romanov Tsars, the most wealthy and powerful royal family that Europe ever saw.
Putin’s war is just an extension of this. Stalin inherited the Russian empire at its largest, most powerful state. If one was to consider the Warsaw Pact, Russia’s soviet empire reached from Ulaanbaatar to Warsaw. Putin, by contrast, has inherited Russia at its smallest since perhaps Peter the Great started building. Putin is seeking to build back the empire; and in the spirit of Russia’s hapless rulers, who ranged from detached to wicked, he is willing to sacrifice the peasants for his idea of Russia. And that isn’t new either.
February 24, 2018
The Shadow of the Winter Palace details the history of the last four Tsars of Russia, covering the years 1825-1917.
I found Crankshaw’s work to be insightful and thorough, maybe a bit highbrow verging on pedantic, yet also dramatic and attention-grabbing. At times, his writing reads like a textbook, while at others like a great novel, a style swaying between expository and narrative. The subject matter was intriguing with a behind-the-scenes approach to the political decisions and egos that shaped the country, the people, the times, and the world’s opinions. I feel as though I learned a lot.
My one disappointment is that, after following a rather detailed narrative of the 19th-Century Tsardom in the first 300 pages, Crankshaw glosses over the 1900s, barely touching on Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ rise to power or even Russia’s involvement in WWI. He rushes through these topics and Nicholas II’s reign in a manner uncharacteristic with the rest of the book, which left me feeling cheated, especially after such an investment of my time up to that point. Understandably, these topics extend into history beyond 1917, but the experience is still much like watching a movie in which the ending is an obvious setup for a sequel. Consistent with this habit to gloss over topics, Crankshaw has a tendency to make assumptions about what the reader may already know, leaving out pertinent information and thus detracting from the story, so make sure you have Google ready to help fill in the blanks.
Despite my criticisms, I found the book to be incredibly fascinating overall and would recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Russia’s history post-Catherine the Great and leading up to WWI and Lenin’s reign of terror.
I found Crankshaw’s work to be insightful and thorough, maybe a bit highbrow verging on pedantic, yet also dramatic and attention-grabbing. At times, his writing reads like a textbook, while at others like a great novel, a style swaying between expository and narrative. The subject matter was intriguing with a behind-the-scenes approach to the political decisions and egos that shaped the country, the people, the times, and the world’s opinions. I feel as though I learned a lot.
My one disappointment is that, after following a rather detailed narrative of the 19th-Century Tsardom in the first 300 pages, Crankshaw glosses over the 1900s, barely touching on Lenin and the Bolsheviks’ rise to power or even Russia’s involvement in WWI. He rushes through these topics and Nicholas II’s reign in a manner uncharacteristic with the rest of the book, which left me feeling cheated, especially after such an investment of my time up to that point. Understandably, these topics extend into history beyond 1917, but the experience is still much like watching a movie in which the ending is an obvious setup for a sequel. Consistent with this habit to gloss over topics, Crankshaw has a tendency to make assumptions about what the reader may already know, leaving out pertinent information and thus detracting from the story, so make sure you have Google ready to help fill in the blanks.
Despite my criticisms, I found the book to be incredibly fascinating overall and would recommend it to anyone interested in learning about Russia’s history post-Catherine the Great and leading up to WWI and Lenin’s reign of terror.
September 17, 2023
I bought and rad this book back in the late 1970's and it is a marvellously written and provocative - Crankshaw is one of those marvellous mid-twentieth century British writers who via their public school education, work in journalism, WWII and more travel and journalism absorbed a vast amount experience, learnt languages and turned eventually to writing incredibly penetrating, interesting, opinionated and readable books on historical and current affairs. But while not wishing to discourage anyone from reading this or any of Crankshaw's other books their date of publication must be born in mind. It is impossible for almost anyone who wasn't at least in their mid-twenties when the Berlin Wall came down 1989 to remember or understand what a monolithic and permanent presence the Soviet Union and the post WWII settlement of Europe into opposing blocks appeared. Its solidity and apparent inevitability was reflected backwards onto the history of the late 19th century. A great deal of rubbish was talked about both Russia and Germany and their apparent failure to follow the 'proper' path of developing a liberal democratic civil society.
The disappearance of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the rise of new states like Ukraine or Belarus have changed things. Vast new archives have been opened up but more importantly places like Ukraine which were always simply written about as part of Russia are demanding and deserve that their stories be told.
Relying on books like Crankshaw's without context can lead you into very dated and dangerously simplistic thinking. I loved and found it fascinating when I read it but, while I would read it again, it would be with an appreciation that it is now flawed through being dated.
The disappearance of the Soviet Union, Czechoslovakia and Yugoslavia, the rise of new states like Ukraine or Belarus have changed things. Vast new archives have been opened up but more importantly places like Ukraine which were always simply written about as part of Russia are demanding and deserve that their stories be told.
Relying on books like Crankshaw's without context can lead you into very dated and dangerously simplistic thinking. I loved and found it fascinating when I read it but, while I would read it again, it would be with an appreciation that it is now flawed through being dated.
September 25, 2020
Shadow of the Winter Palace is more or less the anti-Nicholas and Alexandra. I respect Robert Massie as a writer, but if you're looking an easy read, with a cozy, personal view, Edward Crankshaw won't be giving it to you. Rather, Shadow is a sweeping view of the Russian Empire's last century, which had many accomplishments, but fatally chained itself to autocracy, with all authority descending from God (via the Church and its sometimes extremely eccentric representatives) to czar, and czar to people. Russia had real, white slaves until the middle of the 19th century, and even when the serfs were freed, they were not given the land and education that make freedom meaningful. Crankshaw's thesis is that this, and Russia's seeming inability to develop itself to even 18th century European political and economic standards doomed it to irrelevance and revolution in the 20th century. He compares it to Diaghilev's Ballet Russe: a beautiful ornament of a dying age.
July 22, 2021
This book tackles an ambitious piece of Russian history: the near century of imperial rule leading up to the 1917 Russian Revolution. The reigns of tsars Nicholas I, Alexander II, Alexander III, and Nicholas II are covered. The focus is on the political outlook and policies of each ruler are discussed, giving the reader a sense of how Russia responded to reforms, repressions, and everything in between. I am not certain I can concur with the author's conclusions about the Russian people, the autocratic system, and why reform was so difficult, but I hope to find more extensive and updated research on this topic in other sources. Overall, this book made for an interesting read on why the Romanov dynasty collapsed, although it did make for dense reading at times (as one might expect when condensing so much history into less than 400 pages).
July 1, 2018
Exhaustively researched and elegantly written, this book gives a clear and detailed picture of Russia under the last four Romanov tsars, the bloated and ineffectual autocracy that was the lead up to the revolution.
The vastness of the country and its natural resources, the geographical, political and social isolation of its people, both the impossibly wealthy landowning aristocracy and the wretchedly enslaved peasants is difficult to comprehend. The whole romantic mystique surrounding the Russian peasant, illiterate, brutal and brutalizing, permeated the society, preventing effective steps to educate, and elevate the poor.
It seems surprising to me, given this history, that the revolution didn’t come sooner and that it wasn’t bloodier when it did.
The vastness of the country and its natural resources, the geographical, political and social isolation of its people, both the impossibly wealthy landowning aristocracy and the wretchedly enslaved peasants is difficult to comprehend. The whole romantic mystique surrounding the Russian peasant, illiterate, brutal and brutalizing, permeated the society, preventing effective steps to educate, and elevate the poor.
It seems surprising to me, given this history, that the revolution didn’t come sooner and that it wasn’t bloodier when it did.
February 21, 2023
Great because it is right up my alley and i find myself agreeing with much of the author's perspective. Very harsh on poor Nicholas. Writes off the whole years from 2012 on (post Stolypin) as meaningless playing out the string... But what about the big war? yeah yeah- ok - that was important - but another catalyst would have been found. was he right? I don't know. Still i valued the review of the Decembrist part and portraits of Witte and Stolypin- even though he shares lots of criticism - overall he winds up lauding them and quoting approvingly how they were two who tried - and almost succeeded to "save" Russia. I'm pretty convinced.. but i am aware these are deep waters.
December 12, 2023
For what it's worth, I feel this book merits a 3.5 tsar rating but since half stars are not an option, 3 stars is the better assessment of the title. I found it plodding at many stretches. It is undoubtably well researched but a slog to get through. My best takeaway is that I learned some details about the Crimean War, of which I don't know much about. Perhaps the author was too ambitious about too many characters and/or too long a timespan.
September 29, 2020
I really should just admit to myself that I don't care about 19th century revolutionary movements and find them really boring. The author doesn't help bring the events to life, and skips around a bit in the chronology (a super bad idea in this type of book). He's very British and occasionally makes very British remarks about what awful Tsars these guys were, which adds some flavor to the book.
July 23, 2022
A broad portrait of the tragedy that is Russia.
A land of unimaginable wealth, but, completely handicapped by incompetent rulers.
The book took a while to get going, due the the sweep of time covered by the author, but, in the end, really took off.
Well worth reading.
A land of unimaginable wealth, but, completely handicapped by incompetent rulers.
The book took a while to get going, due the the sweep of time covered by the author, but, in the end, really took off.
Well worth reading.
November 14, 2023
Quite a drag, not light reading at all. There was some unwanted attitude and judgement from Crankshaw that showed bias.
February 4, 2025
This was a good overview of the last 4 Tsars of Russia and how this monarchy and country crumbled over time.
May 30, 2008
As the title makes clear, the author examines 19th-century Russia, told from the Tsar's point of view. The book begins with the tragic and comical uprising in December 1825 against Tsar Nicholas I, an ill-led and small revolt that ended with the deaths of many conspirators. A small cabal in and out of government had convinced just enough illiterate Russians that Nicholas was an illegitimate Tsar. The true Tsar was Nicholas' older brother, Constantine, who was living in Warsaw.
Like all other 19th-century revolutions, this one failed, luckily without the deaths of too many innocents. But it was an ominous portent for the Russian autocracy, which was personified in the person of the Russian Emperor, or Tsar, made up of the descendants of the Romanov family, originally from Germany.
The Russians had much to be unhappy about. The peasants, who made up most of the country, toiled under the obsolete serf system, in which they worked on land owned by wealthy landowners who virtually owned them and their work. These landowners, in turn, were shut out of any role in government because they were landowners. The Tsar was the absolute ruler, along with his stable of myrmidons and advisers.
The subsequent Tsars - Nicholas I, II, and III, and Alexander II - all varied in ability and talent, but they all believed in autocracy, which meant no constitution, no labor unions, no elected assembly, no independent judiciary, no free market system. In other words, nothing that comprises the building blocks of a free and prosperous society. What reforms were enacted during this time were usually forced on unwilling Tsars by advisers or outside pressure from terrorist groups and other revolutionaries.
The true tragedy is that once a revolutions finally succeeded, it was at the hands of Lenin and his bloodthirsty Bolsheviks - the Russians had removed one despotic regime only to replace it with an even more despotic regime. Bad as the Tsars were, Russian life slowly had been improving. The feudal system was finally abolished in 1861. A modern railroad system was under construction, which supported the burgeoning industrialization, which hit its stride in the 1890s. A small but growing entrepreneurial class began to make its presence felt. Arts and sciences flourished to some degree, when its practitioners weren't censored or exiled or thrown into jail. An elected assembly, the Duma, was finally permitted by Nicholas III in 1905, though the Tsar dissolved it at his whim and ignored it at will.
But the first fledgling steps toward a functioning democracy were occurring. The Bolsheviks reversed all that and plunged Russians back into servitude and slavery.
Crankshaw covers all this and Russian foreign affairs in great detail, including fascinating portraits of influential government officials. Like all good historians, he explains why something happened, details the ramifications, and makes a judgment. Though slow reading, it's an enjoyable book, and helps explain why the Tsars were so unpopular, and how the atmosphere was ripe for a new leadership that promised freedom but instead delivered more tyranny.
Like all other 19th-century revolutions, this one failed, luckily without the deaths of too many innocents. But it was an ominous portent for the Russian autocracy, which was personified in the person of the Russian Emperor, or Tsar, made up of the descendants of the Romanov family, originally from Germany.
The Russians had much to be unhappy about. The peasants, who made up most of the country, toiled under the obsolete serf system, in which they worked on land owned by wealthy landowners who virtually owned them and their work. These landowners, in turn, were shut out of any role in government because they were landowners. The Tsar was the absolute ruler, along with his stable of myrmidons and advisers.
The subsequent Tsars - Nicholas I, II, and III, and Alexander II - all varied in ability and talent, but they all believed in autocracy, which meant no constitution, no labor unions, no elected assembly, no independent judiciary, no free market system. In other words, nothing that comprises the building blocks of a free and prosperous society. What reforms were enacted during this time were usually forced on unwilling Tsars by advisers or outside pressure from terrorist groups and other revolutionaries.
The true tragedy is that once a revolutions finally succeeded, it was at the hands of Lenin and his bloodthirsty Bolsheviks - the Russians had removed one despotic regime only to replace it with an even more despotic regime. Bad as the Tsars were, Russian life slowly had been improving. The feudal system was finally abolished in 1861. A modern railroad system was under construction, which supported the burgeoning industrialization, which hit its stride in the 1890s. A small but growing entrepreneurial class began to make its presence felt. Arts and sciences flourished to some degree, when its practitioners weren't censored or exiled or thrown into jail. An elected assembly, the Duma, was finally permitted by Nicholas III in 1905, though the Tsar dissolved it at his whim and ignored it at will.
But the first fledgling steps toward a functioning democracy were occurring. The Bolsheviks reversed all that and plunged Russians back into servitude and slavery.
Crankshaw covers all this and Russian foreign affairs in great detail, including fascinating portraits of influential government officials. Like all good historians, he explains why something happened, details the ramifications, and makes a judgment. Though slow reading, it's an enjoyable book, and helps explain why the Tsars were so unpopular, and how the atmosphere was ripe for a new leadership that promised freedom but instead delivered more tyranny.
April 27, 2020
An excellent review of late Tsarist history; Crankshaw writes with a sophisticated fluency without ever diving headfirst into jargon and specifics that could alienate the reader. His political and diplomatic writing is gripping as one might imagine, but his treatment of the arts is much more enticingly written that the vast majority of art history comes across. Chapters 11, 14, 15 and 22 are especially brilliant. I will likely return to this book at some point in the future, there is simply so much to explore within it.
July 31, 2015
As always, any reasonably erudite work on Russia during the crescendo of revolution is fascinating stuff. Perhaps I'm some sort of nut, but I sometimes feel like the Russia of the 19th - 20th century could not have been real, but must have been an epic farce created to entertain and horrify Americans. The circus of sublime hysteria is nearly impossible to comprehend - hence my lifelong pet reading project.
That said, old Ed Crankshaw doesn't quite do it for me, narratively speaking. I tend to hold writers of histories up to the gold standard - that's Robert Caro, friends - and Not-So-Easy Ed's prickly style falls a bit short, Gov'ner. He certainly seems to know his subject, but throughout, he maintains the tone of a lecture. Rather pedantic. I like at least the appearance of even handedness in a historical assessment. Caro perfected the art of introducing an argument opposite his own conclusion, then laying out the systematic reasoning that led him to discount the former. Ed wouldn't lower himself to such waffling, I guess. At times it seems Crankshaft's sense of his own learnedness gets in the way of some decent narrative instincts and his tight grasp of the facts makes him stingy with clear elucidation.
Still, I'd recommend the book to anyone interested in the fall of the Romanovs and the run up to WWI.
That said, old Ed Crankshaw doesn't quite do it for me, narratively speaking. I tend to hold writers of histories up to the gold standard - that's Robert Caro, friends - and Not-So-Easy Ed's prickly style falls a bit short, Gov'ner. He certainly seems to know his subject, but throughout, he maintains the tone of a lecture. Rather pedantic. I like at least the appearance of even handedness in a historical assessment. Caro perfected the art of introducing an argument opposite his own conclusion, then laying out the systematic reasoning that led him to discount the former. Ed wouldn't lower himself to such waffling, I guess. At times it seems Crankshaft's sense of his own learnedness gets in the way of some decent narrative instincts and his tight grasp of the facts makes him stingy with clear elucidation.
Still, I'd recommend the book to anyone interested in the fall of the Romanovs and the run up to WWI.
June 29, 2016
A comprehensive history of the politics of Russia during the reign of the final four Romanov Tsars, beginning with the Decembrist Revolt and ending with the abdication of Nicholas II after the February Revolution. It's a bit scattershot in its approach, with the Crimean War, the Russo-Turkish War, and the Russo-Japanese war receiving the most attention, while the war that precipitated the collapse of the Romanovs, WWI, hardly merits more than a little mention. This is very much a narrative history with a top-down approach, and probably could be useful to learn a bit about some rather important events that happened in 19th century Russia. I could do without Crankshaw's diagnoses about why Russia functioned the way it did and the nature of the "Russian character."
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