Tsar's family come alive, 07 Aug 2008
This is a masterly work of history. Although, of course, we all know how the Romanov story ends, Rappaport takes us inside The House of Special Purpose where the Tsar and his family were imprisoned, and locks us into that oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere. Nicholas, Alexandra and the duchesses come alive for us, not as saints or villains, but as a real family, loving each other, finding solace in their religion, trying to support each other as, closed off from the outside world, they await their fate ... The Tsar, whose dearest wish was to run a farm; Alexandra, racked with pain from sciatica; the girls who found pleasure in helping maids to sweep floors because it broke up the tedium of their days.
The tension is unbearable as Rappaport recounts the last 14 days of their lives as the politics of revolution and world war close around them.
This is a short book, which makes it all the more compelling because you can read it in a couple of sittings and maintain that tension and mood. I have been defeated in the past by the (literal) weight of volumes of Russian history - Orlando Figes's People's Revolution springs to mind, too heavy to hold, too heavy to carry, too many characters/organisations to keep track of, and consequently still-unfinished several years after it toppled off my bedside table and nudged its way under my bed (whence abandoned books never emerge again).
A feeble excuse, I know! But well done Helen Rappaport for writing a serious book of history that the ordinary, interested reader has a hope of finishing.

New perspectives on a hidden history, 05 Aug 2008
It isn't easy to take on the Tsars. You're entering a minefield - the politics and bloodletting of the Russian Revolution and everything that followed: Stalin, the hunger, the Second World War, purges and worse. To reach back through all that, and get at the true nature of the last days of the last Tsar of Russia and his ill-starred family, is an achievement indeed.
For me this book has a terrifying relentlessness about it. I read it sitting on a beach in Sicily, the blue Med lapping at my toes, a weird experience when, in the book, I was there in that stifling Ypatiev House in the hot Russian summer, no air conditioning, nothing at all to do, nowhere to go, staring my fate in the face. It's not surprising they turned to prayer. A lesser family would have disintegrated.
As the days passed you felt it with them, that terrible and growing sense of absolute doom. Helen Rappaport has no mercy - she tells it like it is. My nerves were strung out to breaking point as the final steps of the man who had masterminded the murders ascended the stair, on the evening of their deaths, and the unbearably innocent girls responded eagerly to the order and ran down happily to the basement where the gunmen would be.
And the murders! They went on and on, twenty minutes of carnage, so incompetent, so bloody. The author makes us see, feel, smell it. There's no escape. It is gruesome and it is real. I'm in that cellar with them and so is every reader.
Afterwards, the sheer uselessly hopeless incompetence of their murderers meant burial in an unmarked scratch grave next to the road for no better reason than the car finally gave up and they couldn't travel further with the bodies through the mud.
And this was the cousin of the King of England.
It's not surprising there's a collective grief in Russia now that bleeds hopelessly on. On the 90th anniversary of the deaths of the family, they've at last found a worthy chronicler in Rappaport, whose level, even and unflinchingly steady voice takes us through and past these events, places them in time, and leaves us with the scent of lilies in a wood, and the murmur of the all-night vigil of a thousand voices who haven't forgotten, and will not, ever forget. And neither will I.

Ekaterinburg, 19 Jul 2008
Using her extensive research of diaries, letters and eyewitness accounts, Helen Rappaport draws together the strands of this story to write an utterly compelling account of the last days of the Imperial Family.


Set against the backdrop of war, revolution, and factional fighting amongst the Bolsheviks she explains how, after the Tsar's abdication, the Imperial family finally come to be imprisoned in the Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg, chillingly referred to as The House of Special Purpose. The house which has been turned into a prison, shut off from the outside world by a wooden palisade.

Helen really conveys the feeling of doom as the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and their daughter Maria enter the house on April 30th 1918, the other children following later when Alexy, the Tsarevich, has recovered from an attack of haemophilia. She describes how, for the next few weeks, the family and their servants endure the stifling heat, the oppressive atmosphere and lack of privacy of their apartment, cut off from the outside world, the windows sealed shut and whitewashed over.

She draws such intimate and detailed portraits of Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, that the family come vividly to life as they cope with their confinement. The Tsar resigned, Alexandra in constant pain, comforted by her daughters and her strong orthodox faith. The four Grand Duchesses, as they learn to wash their clothes, scrub floors and bake bread. Serious Olga, practical Tatiana, caring Maria and mischievous Anastasia, and Alexy, their brother, frail and sickly, playing soldiers with the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev.

The arrival of a new commandant Yakov Yurovsky on July 4th heralds a much harsher regime for the prisoners. The sense of foreboding intensifies in the house. Yurovsky's purpose is to arrange and carry out the efficient and secret liquidation of the Romanov family. The tension builds as the night chosen for the murders arrives and Yurovsky's meticulous plans begin to unravel. The subsequent horrific and botched killings in the cellar are gut wrenching and deeply shocking. The bungled efforts of the killers to dispose of the bodies, if not so tragic could be considered almost farcical.

Leaving aside the politics of the Tsar's disastrous reign, Helen has concentrated on this story of the Imperial family who were brutally murdered with the consent of Moscow, an act which was to be repeated all over Russia in the following years resulting in the death of millions of people. A terror outstripping any of the atrocities perpetrated during the Romanov reign.

Helen Rappaport has written a very powerful and moving book, which I recommend unreservedly.


Ms. Rappaport possesses a remarkable ability to breathe life into people and places long gone, 02 Jul 2008
I am in absolute awe of Ms. Rappaport's research and writing abilities, particularly her keen descriptiveness and her uncanny ability to "see" and report on circumstances, people, a house, a city -and a mood- as vividly as if this all happened in front of her eyes yesterday, instead of almost a century ago. Though describing gloom and fear and the sense of "suffocation," as well as other subjects that I'd rather not dwell on, the book has enthralled me.

Despite my decades of reading almost everything written in English or French on this subject, I found Ms. Rappaport's perspective on the times and the individual characters to be surprisingly enlightening. Ms. Rappaport has successfully synthesized an enormous amount of information from both well-known and rarer sources. With it, she conjures a sometimes agonizingly realistic picture complete with atmosphere, an overwhelming sense of tension, and visual descriptions that propel the reader backward in time to a city, a house and circumstances that long afterwards linger in the mind as vividly and hauntingly as an unshakable personal memory.

A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family, 30 Jun 2008
I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.


All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!

Tsar's family come alive, 07 Aug 2008
This is a masterly work of history. Although, of course, we all know how the Romanov story ends, Rappaport takes us inside The House of Special Purpose where the Tsar and his family were imprisoned, and locks us into that oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere. Nicholas, Alexandra and the duchesses come alive for us, not as saints or villains, but as a real family, loving each other, finding solace in their religion, trying to support each other as, closed off from the outside world, they await their fate ... The Tsar, whose dearest wish was to run a farm; Alexandra, racked with pain from sciatica; the girls who found pleasure in helping maids to sweep floors because it broke up the tedium of their days.
The tension is unbearable as Rappaport recounts the last 14 days of their lives as the politics of revolution and world war close around them.
This is a short book, which makes it all the more compelling because you can read it in a couple of sittings and maintain that tension and mood. I have been defeated in the past by the (literal) weight of volumes of Russian history - Orlando Figes's People's Revolution springs to mind, too heavy to hold, too heavy to carry, too many characters/organisations to keep track of, and consequently still-unfinished several years after it toppled off my bedside table and nudged its way under my bed (whence abandoned books never emerge again).
A feeble excuse, I know! But well done Helen Rappaport for writing a serious book of history that the ordinary, interested reader has a hope of finishing.

New perspectives on a hidden history, 05 Aug 2008
It isn't easy to take on the Tsars. You're entering a minefield - the politics and bloodletting of the Russian Revolution and everything that followed: Stalin, the hunger, the Second World War, purges and worse. To reach back through all that, and get at the true nature of the last days of the last Tsar of Russia and his ill-starred family, is an achievement indeed.
For me this book has a terrifying relentlessness about it. I read it sitting on a beach in Sicily, the blue Med lapping at my toes, a weird experience when, in the book, I was there in that stifling Ypatiev House in the hot Russian summer, no air conditioning, nothing at all to do, nowhere to go, staring my fate in the face. It's not surprising they turned to prayer. A lesser family would have disintegrated.
As the days passed you felt it with them, that terrible and growing sense of absolute doom. Helen Rappaport has no mercy - she tells it like it is. My nerves were strung out to breaking point as the final steps of the man who had masterminded the murders ascended the stair, on the evening of their deaths, and the unbearably innocent girls responded eagerly to the order and ran down happily to the basement where the gunmen would be.
And the murders! They went on and on, twenty minutes of carnage, so incompetent, so bloody. The author makes us see, feel, smell it. There's no escape. It is gruesome and it is real. I'm in that cellar with them and so is every reader.
Afterwards, the sheer uselessly hopeless incompetence of their murderers meant burial in an unmarked scratch grave next to the road for no better reason than the car finally gave up and they couldn't travel further with the bodies through the mud.
And this was the cousin of the King of England.
It's not surprising there's a collective grief in Russia now that bleeds hopelessly on. On the 90th anniversary of the deaths of the family, they've at last found a worthy chronicler in Rappaport, whose level, even and unflinchingly steady voice takes us through and past these events, places them in time, and leaves us with the scent of lilies in a wood, and the murmur of the all-night vigil of a thousand voices who haven't forgotten, and will not, ever forget. And neither will I.

Ekaterinburg, 19 Jul 2008
Using her extensive research of diaries, letters and eyewitness accounts, Helen Rappaport draws together the strands of this story to write an utterly compelling account of the last days of the Imperial Family.


Set against the backdrop of war, revolution, and factional fighting amongst the Bolsheviks she explains how, after the Tsar's abdication, the Imperial family finally come to be imprisoned in the Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg, chillingly referred to as The House of Special Purpose. The house which has been turned into a prison, shut off from the outside world by a wooden palisade.

Helen really conveys the feeling of doom as the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and their daughter Maria enter the house on April 30th 1918, the other children following later when Alexy, the Tsarevich, has recovered from an attack of haemophilia. She describes how, for the next few weeks, the family and their servants endure the stifling heat, the oppressive atmosphere and lack of privacy of their apartment, cut off from the outside world, the windows sealed shut and whitewashed over.

She draws such intimate and detailed portraits of Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, that the family come vividly to life as they cope with their confinement. The Tsar resigned, Alexandra in constant pain, comforted by her daughters and her strong orthodox faith. The four Grand Duchesses, as they learn to wash their clothes, scrub floors and bake bread. Serious Olga, practical Tatiana, caring Maria and mischievous Anastasia, and Alexy, their brother, frail and sickly, playing soldiers with the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev.

The arrival of a new commandant Yakov Yurovsky on July 4th heralds a much harsher regime for the prisoners. The sense of foreboding intensifies in the house. Yurovsky's purpose is to arrange and carry out the efficient and secret liquidation of the Romanov family. The tension builds as the night chosen for the murders arrives and Yurovsky's meticulous plans begin to unravel. The subsequent horrific and botched killings in the cellar are gut wrenching and deeply shocking. The bungled efforts of the killers to dispose of the bodies, if not so tragic could be considered almost farcical.

Leaving aside the politics of the Tsar's disastrous reign, Helen has concentrated on this story of the Imperial family who were brutally murdered with the consent of Moscow, an act which was to be repeated all over Russia in the following years resulting in the death of millions of people. A terror outstripping any of the atrocities perpetrated during the Romanov reign.

Helen Rappaport has written a very powerful and moving book, which I recommend unreservedly.


Ms. Rappaport possesses a remarkable ability to breathe life into people and places long gone, 02 Jul 2008
I am in absolute awe of Ms. Rappaport's research and writing abilities, particularly her keen descriptiveness and her uncanny ability to "see" and report on circumstances, people, a house, a city -and a mood- as vividly as if this all happened in front of her eyes yesterday, instead of almost a century ago. Though describing gloom and fear and the sense of "suffocation," as well as other subjects that I'd rather not dwell on, the book has enthralled me.

Despite my decades of reading almost everything written in English or French on this subject, I found Ms. Rappaport's perspective on the times and the individual characters to be surprisingly enlightening. Ms. Rappaport has successfully synthesized an enormous amount of information from both well-known and rarer sources. With it, she conjures a sometimes agonizingly realistic picture complete with atmosphere, an overwhelming sense of tension, and visual descriptions that propel the reader backward in time to a city, a house and circumstances that long afterwards linger in the mind as vividly and hauntingly as an unshakable personal memory.

A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family, 30 Jun 2008
I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.


All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!


Useful but curiously dull, 24 Oct 2008
This is a very useful survey of Stalin's life and political career. It uses some of the new archival sources in Moscow, though not all of them by a long way, and it is easily accessible. But the prose is rather dull, and Stalin does not come to life, as he does, for example, in Sebag Montefiore's works. I also found the analysis disappointing. This is not a book that places Stalin in the context of his times, or makes his rise to power, his terror and his cult, understandable. For that it is better to go to Montefiore and to Figes's The Whisperers. But there are some useful details here.

Excellent book, 08 Mar 2008
This is a really good book. While Stalin may be a character who it's hard to empathise with, Service approaches the topic with complete objectiity, leaving the reader to make up their own minds on the facts. The book is divided into nearly 50 chapters of ten to twelve pages each, which makes it easier to digest each separate issue and event the author addresses. Overall, great book for anyone keen on knowing more about Stalin.

Too close for comfort, 12 Jul 2007
This is well worth a read, although at times you may need to take a break from it as , by the very nature of its subject, it can be depressing. You really sense that Service has got into the mind of Stalin, but rather than sensationalising his material, he presents his research with a cool, detatched approach. By the end you have some undertanding of the system, ideology and paranoia that allowed Stalin to pursue his enemies, although Service never for one moment excuses Stalin, and his huge culpability for the crimes of his regime. Apart from the appaling catalogue of evils to his name, there are also numerous jaw-dropping moments at Stalin's rank incompetence. A terrible warning for us all.

An excellent biography of a man who shaped history, 09 May 2007
Stalin by Robert Service is a very readable account of the life of the infamous dictator. It is certainly the best biography of Stalin I have read because it puts the man in conttext and does not try to put across an overtly political message. Serious students of Stalin may want something with a bit more detail but this is in my opinion the definative biography of Stalin which is accessible to all.

A superb account, 27 Dec 2005
Without much debate, one of the best works on Stalin. What is worthwhile mentioning here is: Unlike many American and European historians, biographers and political analysts who have had written, edited or commented on Stalin and his rise to power in the CC of the USSR quite acrimoniously and dubiously over the years, this book is quite different. Instead, Service does an EXCELLENT job of:

1. Taking into accounts as they were and not mentioning what he thinks on them. Rather criticising Stalin and his every political move, we get a clear account of his real motives, his way of thinking, pressures he handled, the question of being either in power or out of it.

2. His fights with Trotsky, later with Kamenev and Zinoviev and then finally with Bukharin are mentioned and exemplified in great finesse. What one ought to note is that contrary to what most historians (over the decades) have seen Stalin as: short-tempered and haughty, he was a man of great discipline, far-sighted and highly motivated political analyst.

His childhood, rise to power, dekulakisation, rapid industrialisation and collectivisation of farms and other facets of Soviet regime are very nicely introduced, mentioned and illustrated. Moreover what makes the reading even better is: opposite views from Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and others are mentioned and contrasted. 5 stars overall!

Subhasish Ghosh
26th Dec 2005

St. Cross College,
University of Oxford

Tsar's family come alive, 07 Aug 2008
This is a masterly work of history. Although, of course, we all know how the Romanov story ends, Rappaport takes us inside The House of Special Purpose where the Tsar and his family were imprisoned, and locks us into that oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere. Nicholas, Alexandra and the duchesses come alive for us, not as saints or villains, but as a real family, loving each other, finding solace in their religion, trying to support each other as, closed off from the outside world, they await their fate ... The Tsar, whose dearest wish was to run a farm; Alexandra, racked with pain from sciatica; the girls who found pleasure in helping maids to sweep floors because it broke up the tedium of their days.
The tension is unbearable as Rappaport recounts the last 14 days of their lives as the politics of revolution and world war close around them.
This is a short book, which makes it all the more compelling because you can read it in a couple of sittings and maintain that tension and mood. I have been defeated in the past by the (literal) weight of volumes of Russian history - Orlando Figes's People's Revolution springs to mind, too heavy to hold, too heavy to carry, too many characters/organisations to keep track of, and consequently still-unfinished several years after it toppled off my bedside table and nudged its way under my bed (whence abandoned books never emerge again).
A feeble excuse, I know! But well done Helen Rappaport for writing a serious book of history that the ordinary, interested reader has a hope of finishing.

New perspectives on a hidden history, 05 Aug 2008
It isn't easy to take on the Tsars. You're entering a minefield - the politics and bloodletting of the Russian Revolution and everything that followed: Stalin, the hunger, the Second World War, purges and worse. To reach back through all that, and get at the true nature of the last days of the last Tsar of Russia and his ill-starred family, is an achievement indeed.
For me this book has a terrifying relentlessness about it. I read it sitting on a beach in Sicily, the blue Med lapping at my toes, a weird experience when, in the book, I was there in that stifling Ypatiev House in the hot Russian summer, no air conditioning, nothing at all to do, nowhere to go, staring my fate in the face. It's not surprising they turned to prayer. A lesser family would have disintegrated.
As the days passed you felt it with them, that terrible and growing sense of absolute doom. Helen Rappaport has no mercy - she tells it like it is. My nerves were strung out to breaking point as the final steps of the man who had masterminded the murders ascended the stair, on the evening of their deaths, and the unbearably innocent girls responded eagerly to the order and ran down happily to the basement where the gunmen would be.
And the murders! They went on and on, twenty minutes of carnage, so incompetent, so bloody. The author makes us see, feel, smell it. There's no escape. It is gruesome and it is real. I'm in that cellar with them and so is every reader.
Afterwards, the sheer uselessly hopeless incompetence of their murderers meant burial in an unmarked scratch grave next to the road for no better reason than the car finally gave up and they couldn't travel further with the bodies through the mud.
And this was the cousin of the King of England.
It's not surprising there's a collective grief in Russia now that bleeds hopelessly on. On the 90th anniversary of the deaths of the family, they've at last found a worthy chronicler in Rappaport, whose level, even and unflinchingly steady voice takes us through and past these events, places them in time, and leaves us with the scent of lilies in a wood, and the murmur of the all-night vigil of a thousand voices who haven't forgotten, and will not, ever forget. And neither will I.

Ekaterinburg, 19 Jul 2008
Using her extensive research of diaries, letters and eyewitness accounts, Helen Rappaport draws together the strands of this story to write an utterly compelling account of the last days of the Imperial Family.


Set against the backdrop of war, revolution, and factional fighting amongst the Bolsheviks she explains how, after the Tsar's abdication, the Imperial family finally come to be imprisoned in the Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg, chillingly referred to as The House of Special Purpose. The house which has been turned into a prison, shut off from the outside world by a wooden palisade.

Helen really conveys the feeling of doom as the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and their daughter Maria enter the house on April 30th 1918, the other children following later when Alexy, the Tsarevich, has recovered from an attack of haemophilia. She describes how, for the next few weeks, the family and their servants endure the stifling heat, the oppressive atmosphere and lack of privacy of their apartment, cut off from the outside world, the windows sealed shut and whitewashed over.

She draws such intimate and detailed portraits of Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, that the family come vividly to life as they cope with their confinement. The Tsar resigned, Alexandra in constant pain, comforted by her daughters and her strong orthodox faith. The four Grand Duchesses, as they learn to wash their clothes, scrub floors and bake bread. Serious Olga, practical Tatiana, caring Maria and mischievous Anastasia, and Alexy, their brother, frail and sickly, playing soldiers with the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev.

The arrival of a new commandant Yakov Yurovsky on July 4th heralds a much harsher regime for the prisoners. The sense of foreboding intensifies in the house. Yurovsky's purpose is to arrange and carry out the efficient and secret liquidation of the Romanov family. The tension builds as the night chosen for the murders arrives and Yurovsky's meticulous plans begin to unravel. The subsequent horrific and botched killings in the cellar are gut wrenching and deeply shocking. The bungled efforts of the killers to dispose of the bodies, if not so tragic could be considered almost farcical.

Leaving aside the politics of the Tsar's disastrous reign, Helen has concentrated on this story of the Imperial family who were brutally murdered with the consent of Moscow, an act which was to be repeated all over Russia in the following years resulting in the death of millions of people. A terror outstripping any of the atrocities perpetrated during the Romanov reign.

Helen Rappaport has written a very powerful and moving book, which I recommend unreservedly.


Ms. Rappaport possesses a remarkable ability to breathe life into people and places long gone, 02 Jul 2008
I am in absolute awe of Ms. Rappaport's research and writing abilities, particularly her keen descriptiveness and her uncanny ability to "see" and report on circumstances, people, a house, a city -and a mood- as vividly as if this all happened in front of her eyes yesterday, instead of almost a century ago. Though describing gloom and fear and the sense of "suffocation," as well as other subjects that I'd rather not dwell on, the book has enthralled me.

Despite my decades of reading almost everything written in English or French on this subject, I found Ms. Rappaport's perspective on the times and the individual characters to be surprisingly enlightening. Ms. Rappaport has successfully synthesized an enormous amount of information from both well-known and rarer sources. With it, she conjures a sometimes agonizingly realistic picture complete with atmosphere, an overwhelming sense of tension, and visual descriptions that propel the reader backward in time to a city, a house and circumstances that long afterwards linger in the mind as vividly and hauntingly as an unshakable personal memory.

A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family, 30 Jun 2008
I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.


All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!


Useful but curiously dull, 24 Oct 2008
This is a very useful survey of Stalin's life and political career. It uses some of the new archival sources in Moscow, though not all of them by a long way, and it is easily accessible. But the prose is rather dull, and Stalin does not come to life, as he does, for example, in Sebag Montefiore's works. I also found the analysis disappointing. This is not a book that places Stalin in the context of his times, or makes his rise to power, his terror and his cult, understandable. For that it is better to go to Montefiore and to Figes's The Whisperers. But there are some useful details here.

Excellent book, 08 Mar 2008
This is a really good book. While Stalin may be a character who it's hard to empathise with, Service approaches the topic with complete objectiity, leaving the reader to make up their own minds on the facts. The book is divided into nearly 50 chapters of ten to twelve pages each, which makes it easier to digest each separate issue and event the author addresses. Overall, great book for anyone keen on knowing more about Stalin.

Too close for comfort, 12 Jul 2007
This is well worth a read, although at times you may need to take a break from it as , by the very nature of its subject, it can be depressing. You really sense that Service has got into the mind of Stalin, but rather than sensationalising his material, he presents his research with a cool, detatched approach. By the end you have some undertanding of the system, ideology and paranoia that allowed Stalin to pursue his enemies, although Service never for one moment excuses Stalin, and his huge culpability for the crimes of his regime. Apart from the appaling catalogue of evils to his name, there are also numerous jaw-dropping moments at Stalin's rank incompetence. A terrible warning for us all.

An excellent biography of a man who shaped history, 09 May 2007
Stalin by Robert Service is a very readable account of the life of the infamous dictator. It is certainly the best biography of Stalin I have read because it puts the man in conttext and does not try to put across an overtly political message. Serious students of Stalin may want something with a bit more detail but this is in my opinion the definative biography of Stalin which is accessible to all.

A superb account, 27 Dec 2005
Without much debate, one of the best works on Stalin. What is worthwhile mentioning here is: Unlike many American and European historians, biographers and political analysts who have had written, edited or commented on Stalin and his rise to power in the CC of the USSR quite acrimoniously and dubiously over the years, this book is quite different. Instead, Service does an EXCELLENT job of:

1. Taking into accounts as they were and not mentioning what he thinks on them. Rather criticising Stalin and his every political move, we get a clear account of his real motives, his way of thinking, pressures he handled, the question of being either in power or out of it.

2. His fights with Trotsky, later with Kamenev and Zinoviev and then finally with Bukharin are mentioned and exemplified in great finesse. What one ought to note is that contrary to what most historians (over the decades) have seen Stalin as: short-tempered and haughty, he was a man of great discipline, far-sighted and highly motivated political analyst.

His childhood, rise to power, dekulakisation, rapid industrialisation and collectivisation of farms and other facets of Soviet regime are very nicely introduced, mentioned and illustrated. Moreover what makes the reading even better is: opposite views from Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and others are mentioned and contrasted. 5 stars overall!

Subhasish Ghosh
26th Dec 2005

St. Cross College,
University of Oxford

Too biased towards the republican side, 17 Nov 2008
I didn't like this book as although no one would pretend that Franco wasn't a deeply unpleasant man let alone the German and Italian leaders who sent him assistance, the author doesn't seem to explain properly the following facts:

1 The republic government only had a small majority of seats and the opposition had a majority of votes. Although technically the republic government was the legal government a sensible govenment with a small majority of seats and a minority of votes would have tried to adopt moderate policies. The republican government managed to upset too many important groups at once with foolish policies some of which may have been right and some of which were definitely wrong but all of which were foolish for a government with only a small majority to introduce. They alienated the Church, the armed forces, the peasantry in some areas of the country, the landowners and even the moderate middle class. There were huge areas of the country where they were deeply unpopular.

2 During the Spanish Civil War there was infighting between communist and anarchist groups. Read Orwell's "Homagee to Catalonia" for details.

3 Both sides carried out gratuitous atrocities and the republicans murdered thousands of low ranking priests, monks and nuns many of whom had never had any involvement with politics and had spent their entire lives teaching or nursing the poor.

4 The republic govenment was supported by the USSR and the attitude of the republic government towards religion and private property made it difficult for many other countries e.g. the United States and Great Britian to give it any moral support.



Really useful Introduction, 26 Jun 2008
I was a total beginner in terms of knowing about the Spanish Civil War and came across this little book in the local branch of Blackwells. As an introductory text, it is superb, the layout of each chapter indicating the main themes which may further be explored.
The author first gives an overview of the origins of the war: the dying colonialism of Spain's Imperial past, the consequent loss of status and role for the officer clas, the rise of a new industrial class, the increasing influence of the professions, all of which came to challenge the traditonal grip of the church and the big estate owners.
The author then situates these political and economic changes within the context of the wider European struggles following the first World War, particulary the establishment of the Soviet Union and the consequent fears that Spain would also become socialist. Because of these, the support for Franco by the governments of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which together with 'non-aligned' policies of Britain and the UK were in effect, guaranteed to lead to the defeat of the second Spanish Republic.
The author also discusses the internal splits between the socialists, communists,and the anarchists, its iconic significance for the international community of artists and intellectuls who moved by the Republican's idealism and effective military, political and economic isolation within Europe wrote, fought, painted and fought for the cause. She also en passim reflects upon the impact upon women, many of whom became political activists or fighters. She concludes that its signicance is crucial to any understanding of the subsequent development of European history.

A Very Substantial Introduction, 22 Oct 2007
There's so much material in this little book that I had to read it twice: the first time I was overwhelmed.

There's an 8 page chronology at the back of the book which I suggest reading first, to get an overview of the flow of events.

I had arrived at this book after reading Rudolf Rocker's "The Tragedy of Spain" and Colin Ward's "Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction", both of which discuss the role of the anarcho-syndicalist trade-union CNT in this civil war. The Wikipdea entry "Anarchism in Spain" also presents a significant role for the CNT in the Spanish Civil War. Graham references the CNT in a number of places but in minor ways, so I'm left uncertain as to whether they played as large a role as Rocker and Ward indicate. Graham notes some conflicts between the CNT and socialist groups which interfered with their working together effectively. Without help from England, France, and the United States and with limited help from the Soviet Union, the Left in Spain was at a huge disadvantage, given Italy and Germany's support of Franco. It seemed remarkable that the Left was able to fight for as long as it did.

I don't recall studying anything about this civil war in school, let alone knowing how much was involved. The relevance seems high: a country in which conservatives and liberals were in serious conflict. The conservatives started a war. A sobering lesson: bombing of, imprisonment of and execution of liberals. The conservatives won.

Graham has done her job in this introduction: I'm encouraged to read more about the Spanish Civil War. Graham provides 5 pages of further reading which includes some websites (3 in Spanish 2 in English)

Great overview of the political and social impact, less so for military aspects and causes, 18 Apr 2007
Before you buy this book, you need to ask yourself what aspects of the Spanish Civil war are you most curious about. If you are interested in the military history, then this is not the book for you, as little attention is devoted to the military developments of the war. Also, if you are interested in the origins of the war (i.e. what started it) then this book will only provide a general overview of the antecedents rather than a complex examination of them. However, if you have a general curiosity about the Civil War, especially the social and political aspects of it whilst it was going on, then this is a superb book.

The author has done three things particularly well. Firstly, the author been able to explain the political motivations of the outside powers Italy and Germany, whose involvement had more to do with cynical financial gains than it did with any ideological commonality with Franco. Secondly, the book beautifully examines and explains the strategies and motivations for the faction leaders. I found this to be amongst the most interesting aspects, and it was very informative to learn why Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Negrin were involved in the war, and what strategies they had in place to get the best favourable outcome for their side. Finally, the author also elegantly weaves the international frictions of the time into the conflict into the story.

Another interesting and enjoyable part of the book is its examination of what happened to the losing side. We discover that many fighters fled to France and became active in the French resistance, some even making it via the leftist underground to the USSR. Indeed, many of these men would one day fight the Spanish nationalists for a second time, as they clashed with Spanish Blue Shirt volunteers in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

The book does have one or two weaknesses. One weakness is the aforementioned scant treatment of the origins of the war and its military developments, although to be fair the author does warn us that these aspects will not be covered in any depth. Perhaps more serious is the slight bias the author has for the Republican side in the conflict. Indeed, her accounts of the Republic border at times on a letter to a fan club, or even a hagiography.

All in all however, the book provides an excellent overview of the Spanish Civil War, and for the price is simply the best introduction there is.


A great starting point, 27 Jun 2006
This is a great introduction to the topic. There is all the information you require to get an overall picture of the war and give you ideas for areas to further research.
My one complaint would be that I found it sprang back and forth a bit in terms of time lines, but referring to the breakdown of the war by date at the back of the book helped keep it in order.

Tsar's family come alive, 07 Aug 2008
This is a masterly work of history. Although, of course, we all know how the Romanov story ends, Rappaport takes us inside The House of Special Purpose where the Tsar and his family were imprisoned, and locks us into that oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere. Nicholas, Alexandra and the duchesses come alive for us, not as saints or villains, but as a real family, loving each other, finding solace in their religion, trying to support each other as, closed off from the outside world, they await their fate ... The Tsar, whose dearest wish was to run a farm; Alexandra, racked with pain from sciatica; the girls who found pleasure in helping maids to sweep floors because it broke up the tedium of their days.
The tension is unbearable as Rappaport recounts the last 14 days of their lives as the politics of revolution and world war close around them.
This is a short book, which makes it all the more compelling because you can read it in a couple of sittings and maintain that tension and mood. I have been defeated in the past by the (literal) weight of volumes of Russian history - Orlando Figes's People's Revolution springs to mind, too heavy to hold, too heavy to carry, too many characters/organisations to keep track of, and consequently still-unfinished several years after it toppled off my bedside table and nudged its way under my bed (whence abandoned books never emerge again).
A feeble excuse, I know! But well done Helen Rappaport for writing a serious book of history that the ordinary, interested reader has a hope of finishing.

New perspectives on a hidden history, 05 Aug 2008
It isn't easy to take on the Tsars. You're entering a minefield - the politics and bloodletting of the Russian Revolution and everything that followed: Stalin, the hunger, the Second World War, purges and worse. To reach back through all that, and get at the true nature of the last days of the last Tsar of Russia and his ill-starred family, is an achievement indeed.
For me this book has a terrifying relentlessness about it. I read it sitting on a beach in Sicily, the blue Med lapping at my toes, a weird experience when, in the book, I was there in that stifling Ypatiev House in the hot Russian summer, no air conditioning, nothing at all to do, nowhere to go, staring my fate in the face. It's not surprising they turned to prayer. A lesser family would have disintegrated.
As the days passed you felt it with them, that terrible and growing sense of absolute doom. Helen Rappaport has no mercy - she tells it like it is. My nerves were strung out to breaking point as the final steps of the man who had masterminded the murders ascended the stair, on the evening of their deaths, and the unbearably innocent girls responded eagerly to the order and ran down happily to the basement where the gunmen would be.
And the murders! They went on and on, twenty minutes of carnage, so incompetent, so bloody. The author makes us see, feel, smell it. There's no escape. It is gruesome and it is real. I'm in that cellar with them and so is every reader.
Afterwards, the sheer uselessly hopeless incompetence of their murderers meant burial in an unmarked scratch grave next to the road for no better reason than the car finally gave up and they couldn't travel further with the bodies through the mud.
And this was the cousin of the King of England.
It's not surprising there's a collective grief in Russia now that bleeds hopelessly on. On the 90th anniversary of the deaths of the family, they've at last found a worthy chronicler in Rappaport, whose level, even and unflinchingly steady voice takes us through and past these events, places them in time, and leaves us with the scent of lilies in a wood, and the murmur of the all-night vigil of a thousand voices who haven't forgotten, and will not, ever forget. And neither will I.

Ekaterinburg, 19 Jul 2008
Using her extensive research of diaries, letters and eyewitness accounts, Helen Rappaport draws together the strands of this story to write an utterly compelling account of the last days of the Imperial Family.


Set against the backdrop of war, revolution, and factional fighting amongst the Bolsheviks she explains how, after the Tsar's abdication, the Imperial family finally come to be imprisoned in the Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg, chillingly referred to as The House of Special Purpose. The house which has been turned into a prison, shut off from the outside world by a wooden palisade.

Helen really conveys the feeling of doom as the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and their daughter Maria enter the house on April 30th 1918, the other children following later when Alexy, the Tsarevich, has recovered from an attack of haemophilia. She describes how, for the next few weeks, the family and their servants endure the stifling heat, the oppressive atmosphere and lack of privacy of their apartment, cut off from the outside world, the windows sealed shut and whitewashed over.

She draws such intimate and detailed portraits of Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, that the family come vividly to life as they cope with their confinement. The Tsar resigned, Alexandra in constant pain, comforted by her daughters and her strong orthodox faith. The four Grand Duchesses, as they learn to wash their clothes, scrub floors and bake bread. Serious Olga, practical Tatiana, caring Maria and mischievous Anastasia, and Alexy, their brother, frail and sickly, playing soldiers with the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev.

The arrival of a new commandant Yakov Yurovsky on July 4th heralds a much harsher regime for the prisoners. The sense of foreboding intensifies in the house. Yurovsky's purpose is to arrange and carry out the efficient and secret liquidation of the Romanov family. The tension builds as the night chosen for the murders arrives and Yurovsky's meticulous plans begin to unravel. The subsequent horrific and botched killings in the cellar are gut wrenching and deeply shocking. The bungled efforts of the killers to dispose of the bodies, if not so tragic could be considered almost farcical.

Leaving aside the politics of the Tsar's disastrous reign, Helen has concentrated on this story of the Imperial family who were brutally murdered with the consent of Moscow, an act which was to be repeated all over Russia in the following years resulting in the death of millions of people. A terror outstripping any of the atrocities perpetrated during the Romanov reign.

Helen Rappaport has written a very powerful and moving book, which I recommend unreservedly.


Ms. Rappaport possesses a remarkable ability to breathe life into people and places long gone, 02 Jul 2008
I am in absolute awe of Ms. Rappaport's research and writing abilities, particularly her keen descriptiveness and her uncanny ability to "see" and report on circumstances, people, a house, a city -and a mood- as vividly as if this all happened in front of her eyes yesterday, instead of almost a century ago. Though describing gloom and fear and the sense of "suffocation," as well as other subjects that I'd rather not dwell on, the book has enthralled me.

Despite my decades of reading almost everything written in English or French on this subject, I found Ms. Rappaport's perspective on the times and the individual characters to be surprisingly enlightening. Ms. Rappaport has successfully synthesized an enormous amount of information from both well-known and rarer sources. With it, she conjures a sometimes agonizingly realistic picture complete with atmosphere, an overwhelming sense of tension, and visual descriptions that propel the reader backward in time to a city, a house and circumstances that long afterwards linger in the mind as vividly and hauntingly as an unshakable personal memory.

A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family, 30 Jun 2008
I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.


All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!


Useful but curiously dull, 24 Oct 2008
This is a very useful survey of Stalin's life and political career. It uses some of the new archival sources in Moscow, though not all of them by a long way, and it is easily accessible. But the prose is rather dull, and Stalin does not come to life, as he does, for example, in Sebag Montefiore's works. I also found the analysis disappointing. This is not a book that places Stalin in the context of his times, or makes his rise to power, his terror and his cult, understandable. For that it is better to go to Montefiore and to Figes's The Whisperers. But there are some useful details here.

Excellent book, 08 Mar 2008
This is a really good book. While Stalin may be a character who it's hard to empathise with, Service approaches the topic with complete objectiity, leaving the reader to make up their own minds on the facts. The book is divided into nearly 50 chapters of ten to twelve pages each, which makes it easier to digest each separate issue and event the author addresses. Overall, great book for anyone keen on knowing more about Stalin.

Too close for comfort, 12 Jul 2007
This is well worth a read, although at times you may need to take a break from it as , by the very nature of its subject, it can be depressing. You really sense that Service has got into the mind of Stalin, but rather than sensationalising his material, he presents his research with a cool, detatched approach. By the end you have some undertanding of the system, ideology and paranoia that allowed Stalin to pursue his enemies, although Service never for one moment excuses Stalin, and his huge culpability for the crimes of his regime. Apart from the appaling catalogue of evils to his name, there are also numerous jaw-dropping moments at Stalin's rank incompetence. A terrible warning for us all.

An excellent biography of a man who shaped history, 09 May 2007
Stalin by Robert Service is a very readable account of the life of the infamous dictator. It is certainly the best biography of Stalin I have read because it puts the man in conttext and does not try to put across an overtly political message. Serious students of Stalin may want something with a bit more detail but this is in my opinion the definative biography of Stalin which is accessible to all.

A superb account, 27 Dec 2005
Without much debate, one of the best works on Stalin. What is worthwhile mentioning here is: Unlike many American and European historians, biographers and political analysts who have had written, edited or commented on Stalin and his rise to power in the CC of the USSR quite acrimoniously and dubiously over the years, this book is quite different. Instead, Service does an EXCELLENT job of:

1. Taking into accounts as they were and not mentioning what he thinks on them. Rather criticising Stalin and his every political move, we get a clear account of his real motives, his way of thinking, pressures he handled, the question of being either in power or out of it.

2. His fights with Trotsky, later with Kamenev and Zinoviev and then finally with Bukharin are mentioned and exemplified in great finesse. What one ought to note is that contrary to what most historians (over the decades) have seen Stalin as: short-tempered and haughty, he was a man of great discipline, far-sighted and highly motivated political analyst.

His childhood, rise to power, dekulakisation, rapid industrialisation and collectivisation of farms and other facets of Soviet regime are very nicely introduced, mentioned and illustrated. Moreover what makes the reading even better is: opposite views from Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and others are mentioned and contrasted. 5 stars overall!

Subhasish Ghosh
26th Dec 2005

St. Cross College,
University of Oxford

Too biased towards the republican side, 17 Nov 2008
I didn't like this book as although no one would pretend that Franco wasn't a deeply unpleasant man let alone the German and Italian leaders who sent him assistance, the author doesn't seem to explain properly the following facts:

1 The republic government only had a small majority of seats and the opposition had a majority of votes. Although technically the republic government was the legal government a sensible govenment with a small majority of seats and a minority of votes would have tried to adopt moderate policies. The republican government managed to upset too many important groups at once with foolish policies some of which may have been right and some of which were definitely wrong but all of which were foolish for a government with only a small majority to introduce. They alienated the Church, the armed forces, the peasantry in some areas of the country, the landowners and even the moderate middle class. There were huge areas of the country where they were deeply unpopular.

2 During the Spanish Civil War there was infighting between communist and anarchist groups. Read Orwell's "Homagee to Catalonia" for details.

3 Both sides carried out gratuitous atrocities and the republicans murdered thousands of low ranking priests, monks and nuns many of whom had never had any involvement with politics and had spent their entire lives teaching or nursing the poor.

4 The republic govenment was supported by the USSR and the attitude of the republic government towards religion and private property made it difficult for many other countries e.g. the United States and Great Britian to give it any moral support.



Really useful Introduction, 26 Jun 2008
I was a total beginner in terms of knowing about the Spanish Civil War and came across this little book in the local branch of Blackwells. As an introductory text, it is superb, the layout of each chapter indicating the main themes which may further be explored.
The author first gives an overview of the origins of the war: the dying colonialism of Spain's Imperial past, the consequent loss of status and role for the officer clas, the rise of a new industrial class, the increasing influence of the professions, all of which came to challenge the traditonal grip of the church and the big estate owners.
The author then situates these political and economic changes within the context of the wider European struggles following the first World War, particulary the establishment of the Soviet Union and the consequent fears that Spain would also become socialist. Because of these, the support for Franco by the governments of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which together with 'non-aligned' policies of Britain and the UK were in effect, guaranteed to lead to the defeat of the second Spanish Republic.
The author also discusses the internal splits between the socialists, communists,and the anarchists, its iconic significance for the international community of artists and intellectuls who moved by the Republican's idealism and effective military, political and economic isolation within Europe wrote, fought, painted and fought for the cause. She also en passim reflects upon the impact upon women, many of whom became political activists or fighters. She concludes that its signicance is crucial to any understanding of the subsequent development of European history.

A Very Substantial Introduction, 22 Oct 2007
There's so much material in this little book that I had to read it twice: the first time I was overwhelmed.

There's an 8 page chronology at the back of the book which I suggest reading first, to get an overview of the flow of events.

I had arrived at this book after reading Rudolf Rocker's "The Tragedy of Spain" and Colin Ward's "Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction", both of which discuss the role of the anarcho-syndicalist trade-union CNT in this civil war. The Wikipdea entry "Anarchism in Spain" also presents a significant role for the CNT in the Spanish Civil War. Graham references the CNT in a number of places but in minor ways, so I'm left uncertain as to whether they played as large a role as Rocker and Ward indicate. Graham notes some conflicts between the CNT and socialist groups which interfered with their working together effectively. Without help from England, France, and the United States and with limited help from the Soviet Union, the Left in Spain was at a huge disadvantage, given Italy and Germany's support of Franco. It seemed remarkable that the Left was able to fight for as long as it did.

I don't recall studying anything about this civil war in school, let alone knowing how much was involved. The relevance seems high: a country in which conservatives and liberals were in serious conflict. The conservatives started a war. A sobering lesson: bombing of, imprisonment of and execution of liberals. The conservatives won.

Graham has done her job in this introduction: I'm encouraged to read more about the Spanish Civil War. Graham provides 5 pages of further reading which includes some websites (3 in Spanish 2 in English)

Great overview of the political and social impact, less so for military aspects and causes, 18 Apr 2007
Before you buy this book, you need to ask yourself what aspects of the Spanish Civil war are you most curious about. If you are interested in the military history, then this is not the book for you, as little attention is devoted to the military developments of the war. Also, if you are interested in the origins of the war (i.e. what started it) then this book will only provide a general overview of the antecedents rather than a complex examination of them. However, if you have a general curiosity about the Civil War, especially the social and political aspects of it whilst it was going on, then this is a superb book.

The author has done three things particularly well. Firstly, the author been able to explain the political motivations of the outside powers Italy and Germany, whose involvement had more to do with cynical financial gains than it did with any ideological commonality with Franco. Secondly, the book beautifully examines and explains the strategies and motivations for the faction leaders. I found this to be amongst the most interesting aspects, and it was very informative to learn why Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Negrin were involved in the war, and what strategies they had in place to get the best favourable outcome for their side. Finally, the author also elegantly weaves the international frictions of the time into the conflict into the story.

Another interesting and enjoyable part of the book is its examination of what happened to the losing side. We discover that many fighters fled to France and became active in the French resistance, some even making it via the leftist underground to the USSR. Indeed, many of these men would one day fight the Spanish nationalists for a second time, as they clashed with Spanish Blue Shirt volunteers in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

The book does have one or two weaknesses. One weakness is the aforementioned scant treatment of the origins of the war and its military developments, although to be fair the author does warn us that these aspects will not be covered in any depth. Perhaps more serious is the slight bias the author has for the Republican side in the conflict. Indeed, her accounts of the Republic border at times on a letter to a fan club, or even a hagiography.

All in all however, the book provides an excellent overview of the Spanish Civil War, and for the price is simply the best introduction there is.


A great starting point, 27 Jun 2006
This is a great introduction to the topic. There is all the information you require to get an overall picture of the war and give you ideas for areas to further research.
My one complaint would be that I found it sprang back and forth a bit in terms of time lines, but referring to the breakdown of the war by date at the back of the book helped keep it in order.

Concise and well written, 02 Feb 2008
While this may not be the most complete book about the Spanish Civil War, it is a pleasantly well written and concise account of the conflict.
It provides a good overview of the civil war years, without the pain of going through dates, battles and all the detail that you may find on other history books. It does have a good index of references at the end though.Paul Preston's prose has such a good rithm that it feels almost like reading a novel.
A good recomendation for those that wish some general knowledge about the war. If you want something more detailed (with pictures, front evolution maps etc) you will need to go for a bigger volume.

Slanted, doctored and biased, 03 Sep 2007
Totally and utterly biased. The Nationalists can do no right, while the Republic can do no wrong. This book should be treated with great caution even by those who have a wealth of knowledge about the Spanish Civil War and should be completely ignored by those without any previous knowledge of it and looking for an introduction to the subject. Written by someone claiming to be an historian - he should be ashamed of himself.

Fine work, 02 May 2007
This book was essentially re-edited owing to the 70th anniversary of the war that started last year and will end in 2009. Preston's work on the subject is exemplary to begin with and this particular book is no exception.
Admittedly, I brought it to help with study and read it to help with revision some months later. However, Preston's book is interesting and informative on the matter. It might not be as long as others on the war but it is nonetheless a fine work. It is a perfect book for those who know little or nothing on the war and should not be overlooked when considering the war.

Tsar's family come alive, 07 Aug 2008
This is a masterly work of history. Although, of course, we all know how the Romanov story ends, Rappaport takes us inside The House of Special Purpose where the Tsar and his family were imprisoned, and locks us into that oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere. Nicholas, Alexandra and the duchesses come alive for us, not as saints or villains, but as a real family, loving each other, finding solace in their religion, trying to support each other as, closed off from the outside world, they await their fate ... The Tsar, whose dearest wish was to run a farm; Alexandra, racked with pain from sciatica; the girls who found pleasure in helping maids to sweep floors because it broke up the tedium of their days.
The tension is unbearable as Rappaport recounts the last 14 days of their lives as the politics of revolution and world war close around them.
This is a short book, which makes it all the more compelling because you can read it in a couple of sittings and maintain that tension and mood. I have been defeated in the past by the (literal) weight of volumes of Russian history - Orlando Figes's People's Revolution springs to mind, too heavy to hold, too heavy to carry, too many characters/organisations to keep track of, and consequently still-unfinished several years after it toppled off my bedside table and nudged its way under my bed (whence abandoned books never emerge again).
A feeble excuse, I know! But well done Helen Rappaport for writing a serious book of history that the ordinary, interested reader has a hope of finishing.

New perspectives on a hidden history, 05 Aug 2008
It isn't easy to take on the Tsars. You're entering a minefield - the politics and bloodletting of the Russian Revolution and everything that followed: Stalin, the hunger, the Second World War, purges and worse. To reach back through all that, and get at the true nature of the last days of the last Tsar of Russia and his ill-starred family, is an achievement indeed.
For me this book has a terrifying relentlessness about it. I read it sitting on a beach in Sicily, the blue Med lapping at my toes, a weird experience when, in the book, I was there in that stifling Ypatiev House in the hot Russian summer, no air conditioning, nothing at all to do, nowhere to go, staring my fate in the face. It's not surprising they turned to prayer. A lesser family would have disintegrated.
As the days passed you felt it with them, that terrible and growing sense of absolute doom. Helen Rappaport has no mercy - she tells it like it is. My nerves were strung out to breaking point as the final steps of the man who had masterminded the murders ascended the stair, on the evening of their deaths, and the unbearably innocent girls responded eagerly to the order and ran down happily to the basement where the gunmen would be.
And the murders! They went on and on, twenty minutes of carnage, so incompetent, so bloody. The author makes us see, feel, smell it. There's no escape. It is gruesome and it is real. I'm in that cellar with them and so is every reader.
Afterwards, the sheer uselessly hopeless incompetence of their murderers meant burial in an unmarked scratch grave next to the road for no better reason than the car finally gave up and they couldn't travel further with the bodies through the mud.
And this was the cousin of the King of England.
It's not surprising there's a collective grief in Russia now that bleeds hopelessly on. On the 90th anniversary of the deaths of the family, they've at last found a worthy chronicler in Rappaport, whose level, even and unflinchingly steady voice takes us through and past these events, places them in time, and leaves us with the scent of lilies in a wood, and the murmur of the all-night vigil of a thousand voices who haven't forgotten, and will not, ever forget. And neither will I.

Ekaterinburg, 19 Jul 2008
Using her extensive research of diaries, letters and eyewitness accounts, Helen Rappaport draws together the strands of this story to write an utterly compelling account of the last days of the Imperial Family.


Set against the backdrop of war, revolution, and factional fighting amongst the Bolsheviks she explains how, after the Tsar's abdication, the Imperial family finally come to be imprisoned in the Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg, chillingly referred to as The House of Special Purpose. The house which has been turned into a prison, shut off from the outside world by a wooden palisade.

Helen really conveys the feeling of doom as the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and their daughter Maria enter the house on April 30th 1918, the other children following later when Alexy, the Tsarevich, has recovered from an attack of haemophilia. She describes how, for the next few weeks, the family and their servants endure the stifling heat, the oppressive atmosphere and lack of privacy of their apartment, cut off from the outside world, the windows sealed shut and whitewashed over.

She draws such intimate and detailed portraits of Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, that the family come vividly to life as they cope with their confinement. The Tsar resigned, Alexandra in constant pain, comforted by her daughters and her strong orthodox faith. The four Grand Duchesses, as they learn to wash their clothes, scrub floors and bake bread. Serious Olga, practical Tatiana, caring Maria and mischievous Anastasia, and Alexy, their brother, frail and sickly, playing soldiers with the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev.

The arrival of a new commandant Yakov Yurovsky on July 4th heralds a much harsher regime for the prisoners. The sense of foreboding intensifies in the house. Yurovsky's purpose is to arrange and carry out the efficient and secret liquidation of the Romanov family. The tension builds as the night chosen for the murders arrives and Yurovsky's meticulous plans begin to unravel. The subsequent horrific and botched killings in the cellar are gut wrenching and deeply shocking. The bungled efforts of the killers to dispose of the bodies, if not so tragic could be considered almost farcical.

Leaving aside the politics of the Tsar's disastrous reign, Helen has concentrated on this story of the Imperial family who were brutally murdered with the consent of Moscow, an act which was to be repeated all over Russia in the following years resulting in the death of millions of people. A terror outstripping any of the atrocities perpetrated during the Romanov reign.

Helen Rappaport has written a very powerful and moving book, which I recommend unreservedly.


Ms. Rappaport possesses a remarkable ability to breathe life into people and places long gone, 02 Jul 2008
I am in absolute awe of Ms. Rappaport's research and writing abilities, particularly her keen descriptiveness and her uncanny ability to "see" and report on circumstances, people, a house, a city -and a mood- as vividly as if this all happened in front of her eyes yesterday, instead of almost a century ago. Though describing gloom and fear and the sense of "suffocation," as well as other subjects that I'd rather not dwell on, the book has enthralled me.

Despite my decades of reading almost everything written in English or French on this subject, I found Ms. Rappaport's perspective on the times and the individual characters to be surprisingly enlightening. Ms. Rappaport has successfully synthesized an enormous amount of information from both well-known and rarer sources. With it, she conjures a sometimes agonizingly realistic picture complete with atmosphere, an overwhelming sense of tension, and visual descriptions that propel the reader backward in time to a city, a house and circumstances that long afterwards linger in the mind as vividly and hauntingly as an unshakable personal memory.

A fascinating book that could really be the last words on the final days of the Last Imperial Family, 30 Jun 2008
I have just finished your book and I can not say how much I enjoyed it. One feels strangely saying so as it is a sad story by any means.

I have lots of books on the Romanovs and I was quite hesitant to buy another one. What can be possibly new about the whole subject?

But I have to admit that this excellent book gave me a new inside and you were able to separate the political side of things, from the human dimension. There is no romantic or religious vision of the final days. It is not written with a hidden agenda of glorifying the last Imperial Family. It clearly separates the politcial story that led to the downfall of the dynasty and the the human tragedy.

Helen Rappaport did not write the story - as it is ever so often - from the end. I appreciated very much how she showed the different personalities of the Imperial family and how they coped with the new situation. The personality of Alexandra, her illnesses, the illness of the Heir and how this effected all of the family long before the fall of the dynasty. The view that the isolation of the family during their reign found a sort of continuation during the confinement, but without the demands of the rule, and were partly at least from the Czar "welcome" is indeed very convincing. Her final comments hid a nerve with me. On top, I just like Helen Rappaport's style of writing.


All in all, I enjoyed this book immensely, it is fascianting, well written and gives the reader much stuff for further thought. I can only recommend this book!


Useful but curiously dull, 24 Oct 2008
This is a very useful survey of Stalin's life and political career. It uses some of the new archival sources in Moscow, though not all of them by a long way, and it is easily accessible. But the prose is rather dull, and Stalin does not come to life, as he does, for example, in Sebag Montefiore's works. I also found the analysis disappointing. This is not a book that places Stalin in the context of his times, or makes his rise to power, his terror and his cult, understandable. For that it is better to go to Montefiore and to Figes's The Whisperers. But there are some useful details here.

Excellent book, 08 Mar 2008
This is a really good book. While Stalin may be a character who it's hard to empathise with, Service approaches the topic with complete objectiity, leaving the reader to make up their own minds on the facts. The book is divided into nearly 50 chapters of ten to twelve pages each, which makes it easier to digest each separate issue and event the author addresses. Overall, great book for anyone keen on knowing more about Stalin.

Too close for comfort, 12 Jul 2007
This is well worth a read, although at times you may need to take a break from it as , by the very nature of its subject, it can be depressing. You really sense that Service has got into the mind of Stalin, but rather than sensationalising his material, he presents his research with a cool, detatched approach. By the end you have some undertanding of the system, ideology and paranoia that allowed Stalin to pursue his enemies, although Service never for one moment excuses Stalin, and his huge culpability for the crimes of his regime. Apart from the appaling catalogue of evils to his name, there are also numerous jaw-dropping moments at Stalin's rank incompetence. A terrible warning for us all.

An excellent biography of a man who shaped history, 09 May 2007
Stalin by Robert Service is a very readable account of the life of the infamous dictator. It is certainly the best biography of Stalin I have read because it puts the man in conttext and does not try to put across an overtly political message. Serious students of Stalin may want something with a bit more detail but this is in my opinion the definative biography of Stalin which is accessible to all.

A superb account, 27 Dec 2005
Without much debate, one of the best works on Stalin. What is worthwhile mentioning here is: Unlike many American and European historians, biographers and political analysts who have had written, edited or commented on Stalin and his rise to power in the CC of the USSR quite acrimoniously and dubiously over the years, this book is quite different. Instead, Service does an EXCELLENT job of:

1. Taking into accounts as they were and not mentioning what he thinks on them. Rather criticising Stalin and his every political move, we get a clear account of his real motives, his way of thinking, pressures he handled, the question of being either in power or out of it.

2. His fights with Trotsky, later with Kamenev and Zinoviev and then finally with Bukharin are mentioned and exemplified in great finesse. What one ought to note is that contrary to what most historians (over the decades) have seen Stalin as: short-tempered and haughty, he was a man of great discipline, far-sighted and highly motivated political analyst.

His childhood, rise to power, dekulakisation, rapid industrialisation and collectivisation of farms and other facets of Soviet regime are very nicely introduced, mentioned and illustrated. Moreover what makes the reading even better is: opposite views from Lenin, Trotsky, Kamenev, Zinoviev, Bukharin and others are mentioned and contrasted. 5 stars overall!

Subhasish Ghosh
26th Dec 2005

St. Cross College,
University of Oxford

Too biased towards the republican side, 17 Nov 2008
I didn't like this book as although no one would pretend that Franco wasn't a deeply unpleasant man let alone the German and Italian leaders who sent him assistance, the author doesn't seem to explain properly the following facts:

1 The republic government only had a small majority of seats and the opposition had a majority of votes. Although technically the republic government was the legal government a sensible govenment with a small majority of seats and a minority of votes would have tried to adopt moderate policies. The republican government managed to upset too many important groups at once with foolish policies some of which may have been right and some of which were definitely wrong but all of which were foolish for a government with only a small majority to introduce. They alienated the Church, the armed forces, the peasantry in some areas of the country, the landowners and even the moderate middle class. There were huge areas of the country where they were deeply unpopular.

2 During the Spanish Civil War there was infighting between communist and anarchist groups. Read Orwell's "Homagee to Catalonia" for details.

3 Both sides carried out gratuitous atrocities and the republicans murdered thousands of low ranking priests, monks and nuns many of whom had never had any involvement with politics and had spent their entire lives teaching or nursing the poor.

4 The republic govenment was supported by the USSR and the attitude of the republic government towards religion and private property made it difficult for many other countries e.g. the United States and Great Britian to give it any moral support.



Really useful Introduction, 26 Jun 2008
I was a total beginner in terms of knowing about the Spanish Civil War and came across this little book in the local branch of Blackwells. As an introductory text, it is superb, the layout of each chapter indicating the main themes which may further be explored.
The author first gives an overview of the origins of the war: the dying colonialism of Spain's Imperial past, the consequent loss of status and role for the officer clas, the rise of a new industrial class, the increasing influence of the professions, all of which came to challenge the traditonal grip of the church and the big estate owners.
The author then situates these political and economic changes within the context of the wider European struggles following the first World War, particulary the establishment of the Soviet Union and the consequent fears that Spain would also become socialist. Because of these, the support for Franco by the governments of Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany, which together with 'non-aligned' policies of Britain and the UK were in effect, guaranteed to lead to the defeat of the second Spanish Republic.
The author also discusses the internal splits between the socialists, communists,and the anarchists, its iconic significance for the international community of artists and intellectuls who moved by the Republican's idealism and effective military, political and economic isolation within Europe wrote, fought, painted and fought for the cause. She also en passim reflects upon the impact upon women, many of whom became political activists or fighters. She concludes that its signicance is crucial to any understanding of the subsequent development of European history.

A Very Substantial Introduction, 22 Oct 2007
There's so much material in this little book that I had to read it twice: the first time I was overwhelmed.

There's an 8 page chronology at the back of the book which I suggest reading first, to get an overview of the flow of events.

I had arrived at this book after reading Rudolf Rocker's "The Tragedy of Spain" and Colin Ward's "Anarchism: A Very Short Introduction", both of which discuss the role of the anarcho-syndicalist trade-union CNT in this civil war. The Wikipdea entry "Anarchism in Spain" also presents a significant role for the CNT in the Spanish Civil War. Graham references the CNT in a number of places but in minor ways, so I'm left uncertain as to whether they played as large a role as Rocker and Ward indicate. Graham notes some conflicts between the CNT and socialist groups which interfered with their working together effectively. Without help from England, France, and the United States and with limited help from the Soviet Union, the Left in Spain was at a huge disadvantage, given Italy and Germany's support of Franco. It seemed remarkable that the Left was able to fight for as long as it did.

I don't recall studying anything about this civil war in school, let alone knowing how much was involved. The relevance seems high: a country in which conservatives and liberals were in serious conflict. The conservatives started a war. A sobering lesson: bombing of, imprisonment of and execution of liberals. The conservatives won.

Graham has done her job in this introduction: I'm encouraged to read more about the Spanish Civil War. Graham provides 5 pages of further reading which includes some websites (3 in Spanish 2 in English)

Great overview of the political and social impact, less so for military aspects and causes, 18 Apr 2007
Before you buy this book, you need to ask yourself what aspects of the Spanish Civil war are you most curious about. If you are interested in the military history, then this is not the book for you, as little attention is devoted to the military developments of the war. Also, if you are interested in the origins of the war (i.e. what started it) then this book will only provide a general overview of the antecedents rather than a complex examination of them. However, if you have a general curiosity about the Civil War, especially the social and political aspects of it whilst it was going on, then this is a superb book.

The author has done three things particularly well. Firstly, the author been able to explain the political motivations of the outside powers Italy and Germany, whose involvement had more to do with cynical financial gains than it did with any ideological commonality with Franco. Secondly, the book beautifully examines and explains the strategies and motivations for the faction leaders. I found this to be amongst the most interesting aspects, and it was very informative to learn why Mussolini, Hitler, Franco and Negrin were involved in the war, and what strategies they had in place to get the best favourable outcome for their side. Finally, the author also elegantly weaves the international frictions of the time into the conflict into the story.

Another interesting and enjoyable part of the book is its examination of what happened to the losing side. We discover that many fighters fled to France and became active in the French resistance, some even making it via the leftist underground to the USSR. Indeed, many of these men would one day fight the Spanish nationalists for a second time, as they clashed with Spanish Blue Shirt volunteers in the Wehrmacht on the Eastern Front.

The book does have one or two weaknesses. One weakness is the aforementioned scant treatment of the origins of the war and its military developments, although to be fair the author does warn us that these aspects will not be covered in any depth. Perhaps more serious is the slight bias the author has for the Republican side in the conflict. Indeed, her accounts of the Republic border at times on a letter to a fan club, or even a hagiography.

All in all however, the book provides an excellent overview of the Spanish Civil War, and for the price is simply the best introduction there is.


A great starting point, 27 Jun 2006
This is a great introduction to the topic. There is all the information you require to get an overall picture of the war and give you ideas for areas to further research.
My one complaint would be that I found it sprang back and forth a bit in terms of time lines, but referring to the breakdown of the war by date at the back of the book helped keep it in order.

Concise and well written, 02 Feb 2008
While this may not be the most complete book about the Spanish Civil War, it is a pleasantly well written and concise account of the conflict.
It provides a good overview of the civil war years, without the pain of going through dates, battles and all the detail that you may find on other history books. It does have a good index of references at the end though.Paul Preston's prose has such a good rithm that it feels almost like reading a novel.
A good recomendation for those that wish some general knowledge about the war. If you want something more detailed (with pictures, front evolution maps etc) you will need to go for a bigger volume.

Slanted, doctored and biased, 03 Sep 2007
Totally and utterly biased. The Nationalists can do no right, while the Republic can do no wrong. This book should be treated with great caution even by those who have a wealth of knowledge about the Spanish Civil War and should be completely ignored by those without any previous knowledge of it and looking for an introduction to the subject. Written by someone claiming to be an historian - he should be ashamed of himself.

Fine work, 02 May 2007
This book was essentially re-edited owing to the 70th anniversary of the war that started last year and will end in 2009. Preston's work on the subject is exemplary to begin with and this particular book is no exception.
Admittedly, I brought it to help with study and read it to help with revision some months later. However, Preston's book is interesting and informative on the matter. It might not be as long as others on the war but it is nonetheless a fine work. It is a perfect book for those who know little or nothing on the war and should not be overlooked when considering the war.

Interesting read, 15 Dec 2002
I read this book after hearing about it from the open university, and i wasn't dissapointed. It gives a perspective of the two wars that many historians including teachers never touch upon. The concept of total war is given significant space which will make you rethink the criterea of a so called 'total'war'. It covers the two war with a smooth transition covering some of the post-war aspects of european society. I would highly recommend this book to people of all educational backgrounds be it A-level or degree status.

Tsar's family come alive, 07 Aug 2008
This is a masterly work of history. Although, of course, we all know how the Romanov story ends, Rappaport takes us inside The House of Special Purpose where the Tsar and his family were imprisoned, and locks us into that oppressive, claustrophobic atmosphere. Nicholas, Alexandra and the duchesses come alive for us, not as saints or villains, but as a real family, loving each other, finding solace in their religion, trying to support each other as, closed off from the outside world, they await their fate ... The Tsar, whose dearest wish was to run a farm; Alexandra, racked with pain from sciatica; the girls who found pleasure in helping maids to sweep floors because it broke up the tedium of their days.
The tension is unbearable as Rappaport recounts the last 14 days of their lives as the politics of revolution and world war close around them.
This is a short book, which makes it all the more compelling because you can read it in a couple of sittings and maintain that tension and mood. I have been defeated in the past by the (literal) weight of volumes of Russian history - Orlando Figes's People's Revolution springs to mind, too heavy to hold, too heavy to carry, too many characters/organisations to keep track of, and consequently still-unfinished several years after it toppled off my bedside table and nudged its way under my bed (whence abandoned books never emerge again).
A feeble excuse, I know! But well done Helen Rappaport for writing a serious book of history that the ordinary, interested reader has a hope of finishing.

New perspectives on a hidden history, 05 Aug 2008
It isn't easy to take on the Tsars. You're entering a minefield - the politics and bloodletting of the Russian Revolution and everything that followed: Stalin, the hunger, the Second World War, purges and worse. To reach back through all that, and get at the true nature of the last days of the last Tsar of Russia and his ill-starred family, is an achievement indeed.
For me this book has a terrifying relentlessness about it. I read it sitting on a beach in Sicily, the blue Med lapping at my toes, a weird experience when, in the book, I was there in that stifling Ypatiev House in the hot Russian summer, no air conditioning, nothing at all to do, nowhere to go, staring my fate in the face. It's not surprising they turned to prayer. A lesser family would have disintegrated.
As the days passed you felt it with them, that terrible and growing sense of absolute doom. Helen Rappaport has no mercy - she tells it like it is. My nerves were strung out to breaking point as the final steps of the man who had masterminded the murders ascended the stair, on the evening of their deaths, and the unbearably innocent girls responded eagerly to the order and ran down happily to the basement where the gunmen would be.
And the murders! They went on and on, twenty minutes of carnage, so incompetent, so bloody. The author makes us see, feel, smell it. There's no escape. It is gruesome and it is real. I'm in that cellar with them and so is every reader.
Afterwards, the sheer uselessly hopeless incompetence of their murderers meant burial in an unmarked scratch grave next to the road for no better reason than the car finally gave up and they couldn't travel further with the bodies through the mud.
And this was the cousin of the King of England.
It's not surprising there's a collective grief in Russia now that bleeds hopelessly on. On the 90th anniversary of the deaths of the family, they've at last found a worthy chronicler in Rappaport, whose level, even and unflinchingly steady voice takes us through and past these events, places them in time, and leaves us with the scent of lilies in a wood, and the murmur of the all-night vigil of a thousand voices who haven't forgotten, and will not, ever forget. And neither will I.

Ekaterinburg, 19 Jul 2008
Using her extensive research of diaries, letters and eyewitness accounts, Helen Rappaport draws together the strands of this story to write an utterly compelling account of the last days of the Imperial Family.


Set against the backdrop of war, revolution, and factional fighting amongst the Bolsheviks she explains how, after the Tsar's abdication, the Imperial family finally come to be imprisoned in the Impatiev House in Ekaterinburg, chillingly referred to as The House of Special Purpose. The house which has been turned into a prison, shut off from the outside world by a wooden palisade.

Helen really conveys the feeling of doom as the Tsar, the Tsaritsa and their daughter Maria enter the house on April 30th 1918, the other children following later when Alexy, the Tsarevich, has recovered from an attack of haemophilia. She describes how, for the next few weeks, the family and their servants endure the stifling heat, the oppressive atmosphere and lack of privacy of their apartment, cut off from the outside world, the windows sealed shut and whitewashed over.

She draws such intimate and detailed portraits of Nicholas, Alexandra and the children, that the family come vividly to life as they cope with their confinement. The Tsar resigned, Alexandra in constant pain, comforted by her daughters and her strong orthodox faith. The four Grand Duchesses, as they learn to wash their clothes, scrub floors and bake bread. Serious Olga, practical Tatiana, caring Maria and mischievous Anastasia, and Alexy, their brother, frail and sickly, playing soldiers with the kitchen boy Leonid Sednev.

The arrival of a new commandant Yakov Yurovsky on July 4th heralds a much harsher regime for the prisoners. The sense of foreboding intensifies in the house. Yurovsky's purpose is to arrange and carry out the efficient and secret liquidation of the Romanov family. The tension builds as the night chosen for the murders arrives and Yurovsky's meticulous plans begin to unravel. The subsequent horrific and botched killings in the cellar are gut wrenching and deeply shocking. The bungled efforts of the killers to dispose of the bodies, if not so tragic could be considered almost farcical.

Leaving aside the politics of the Tsar's disastrous reign, Helen has concentrated on this story of the Imperial family who were brutally murdered with the consent of Moscow, an act which was to be repeated all over Russia in the following years resulting in the death of millions of people. A terror outstripping any of the atrocities perpetrated during the Romanov reign.

Helen Rappaport has written a very powerful and moving book, which I recommend unreservedly.


Ms. Rappaport possesses a remarkable ability to breathe life into people and places long gone, 02 Jul 2008
I am in absolute awe of Ms. Rappaport's research and writing abilities, particularly her keen descriptivenes