words in scarlet ink

In the last few years I’ve read a couple of books by Simon Sebag Montefiore, and this one about the history of the Romanov dynasty was the first one.

I listened to this as an audiobook but I have to say, this one was pretty dense. I enjoyed it, and I learned a lot, but it was a dense book. Critics seem to dislike that a book with the chief ambition of detailing the entire history of the Romanovs was very detailed? WTF. I don’t know. I expected lots of details.

The book begins a bit earlier than the Romanovs, but of course, it has to. How does a dynasty become a dynasty? It starts so much earlier than the dynasty itself. The Romanov dynasty is a story of brutality, sex, and power. Especially brutality. Did you know that the early Romanov, Alexei, made a deal with Bogdan Khmelnitsky, who has streets named after him for handing over the territory of Ukraine over to Alexei? You know what else he did? He unleashed horrific atrocities on Catholic and Jews, including, but not limited to, children being eaten in front of their parents. Yes, still considered a hero in Russia and Ukraine.

But Peter the Great! He civilized Russia and built St. Petersburg! Yes. He did. He insisted people chew with their mouths closed, poop only in specified areas, and produced a number of guides on how to, basically, not be disgusting. But did you know Peter the Great also had is son tortured to death and was obsessed with decapitation as a biological experiment?

Sometimes brutal is putting it mildly.

In addition to 300 years worth of great and terrible tsars and tsarinas, Montefiore lays out a pretty good explanation of how Russian society worked for three centuries, as well as making some interesting points about the fall of the tsar and how the Russian habits of butchery and totalitarianism transferred to the masters of the new system. Why was it that every single time real reform was proposed the tsar ultimately cracked down and refused the reforms? This happened for hundreds of years. Why is it that Russia deposed its tsar and immediately adopted another totalitarian regime? Why do the Russian people tend to lean towards this totalitarianism?

Joseph Stalin once cynically said, “The people need a tsar.” And ultimately, that is exactly what he was, and was just as bad, if not worse, than any of his predecessors.

I enjoyed this book. Be warned, it is a massive undertaking – I think like 650 pages? It was a very long audiobook. And it is a very chronological book. Montefiore could have explored more themes rather than devote so much to effort to keeping things chronological but as someone with little education on Russian history, the chronology helped me a lot. I could see why someone with a more expansive knowledge base would find it frustrating, but it is meticulously researched, written with an edge of dark humor, and very interesting.