A picture and a Russian history lesson to be continued.
Because I'm leaving for church camp in less than 24 hours, I feel obligated to post something up here. Unfortunately for me, I've nothing to say. Itaque...
I started reading The File on the Tsar by Tom Mangold and some other guy. It was published in the '70s, and I'm not sure how **accurate** it is any more. But here's what I've recalled (or actually learned) so far:
~Nicholas II's grandfather, Alexander I, was assasinated by the Underground in St. Petersburg in 18-?, after a lifetime of reform attempts. He died from severe mutilation due to a hand-grenade thrown in his path.
~Nicholas II's father, Alexander II, enforced a strict no-mercy policy, hunting out Underground with secret police, and publicly executing traitors. During his reign, the frivolity of the court (like that of France) grew to excessive proportions, and the peasants got madder and madder. One of the men Alexander executed was the brother of Lenin, who later became leader of the Bolsheviks.
~A month after Alexander II's death, Nicholas married. His wife, Alexandra of Hesse, was NOT approved by his father, which is why he had to wait so long. He was twenty-six when he became tsar. His wife made most of his decisions for him, and so though he was a good guy, his gullibility became his downfall. Alexandra was an excitable, irritable, and gullible creature, herself, and had this favorite peasant advisor, Rasputin, who supposedly had some psychic powers or something. In fact, at the Ipatiev house, one of the guards observed this--Alexandra behaved like a stereotypical royal, but Nicholas was a nice, quiet family man. Let this be a lesson to overbearing women such as myself!
The royal family (as everyone knows) was exiled to three different places before their termination: Tsarskoe Selo (I have a picture of a chapel there, in my archives somewhere. It's a palace near Petersburg that was built by Catherine the Great), the governor's mansion in Tobolsk, Siberia, and then the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. The Ipatiev house was the rough equivalent to prison. Machine guns, privacy fences, and guards everywhere. No one was allowed in, no one allowed out.
According to traditional history, the whole family was lined up against the wall in a basement room, and shot to death by a detachment of guards on July 16, 1918.
However, these authors question that tradition. Apparently, it's quite possible that the tsar and his heir were killed at Ipatiev, but the rest of the family hastily evacuated to Perm (and beyond?) as the White Russian/Czech army approached Ekaterinburg on that very day. And I haven't read far enough to hear all the why's and wherefore's, but it has some basis in the crime scene and the police records. The rest of the family was terminated later on, of course, so why they're stressing this point so much is beyond me.
I wouldn't know how much of this is credible any more, but it's an interesting read so far.
Here's a picture of Lake Michigan at sunset. 'Twas beautiful.
I started reading The File on the Tsar by Tom Mangold and some other guy. It was published in the '70s, and I'm not sure how **accurate** it is any more. But here's what I've recalled (or actually learned) so far:
~Nicholas II's grandfather, Alexander I, was assasinated by the Underground in St. Petersburg in 18-?, after a lifetime of reform attempts. He died from severe mutilation due to a hand-grenade thrown in his path.
~Nicholas II's father, Alexander II, enforced a strict no-mercy policy, hunting out Underground with secret police, and publicly executing traitors. During his reign, the frivolity of the court (like that of France) grew to excessive proportions, and the peasants got madder and madder. One of the men Alexander executed was the brother of Lenin, who later became leader of the Bolsheviks.
~A month after Alexander II's death, Nicholas married. His wife, Alexandra of Hesse, was NOT approved by his father, which is why he had to wait so long. He was twenty-six when he became tsar. His wife made most of his decisions for him, and so though he was a good guy, his gullibility became his downfall. Alexandra was an excitable, irritable, and gullible creature, herself, and had this favorite peasant advisor, Rasputin, who supposedly had some psychic powers or something. In fact, at the Ipatiev house, one of the guards observed this--Alexandra behaved like a stereotypical royal, but Nicholas was a nice, quiet family man. Let this be a lesson to overbearing women such as myself!
The royal family (as everyone knows) was exiled to three different places before their termination: Tsarskoe Selo (I have a picture of a chapel there, in my archives somewhere. It's a palace near Petersburg that was built by Catherine the Great), the governor's mansion in Tobolsk, Siberia, and then the Ipatiev House in Ekaterinburg. The Ipatiev house was the rough equivalent to prison. Machine guns, privacy fences, and guards everywhere. No one was allowed in, no one allowed out.
According to traditional history, the whole family was lined up against the wall in a basement room, and shot to death by a detachment of guards on July 16, 1918.
However, these authors question that tradition. Apparently, it's quite possible that the tsar and his heir were killed at Ipatiev, but the rest of the family hastily evacuated to Perm (and beyond?) as the White Russian/Czech army approached Ekaterinburg on that very day. And I haven't read far enough to hear all the why's and wherefore's, but it has some basis in the crime scene and the police records. The rest of the family was terminated later on, of course, so why they're stressing this point so much is beyond me.
I wouldn't know how much of this is credible any more, but it's an interesting read so far.
posted by Unknown at 12:48 PM
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