Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, and now Putin the wannabe great. By Bron Sibree for the Sunday Times
The Romanovs: 1613 – 1918
Simon Sebag Montefiore (Orion)
****
Few people understand the nature of power in Russia like British historian Simon Sebag Montefiore. Even fewer, he argues, understand Russia at all today.
“Russia now is so resurgent, so aggressive and so mysterious to most people that I wanted a book that would explain the Russian empire from Ivan the Terrible up until Putin,” says Montefiore, who has achieved that and more in The Romanovs: 1613 – 1918.
The latest in a string of bestselling, award-winning historical works he has written – including Catherine the Great & Potemkin (which is to be made into a film by Angelina Jolie); Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar; Young Stalin; and Jerusalem: The Biography – The Romanovs serves as study of political power. “My mission here is twofold, one is to explain Russia and the Russian empire to people today, and the other is tell a great story.”
Drawing on a wealth of unused primary sources and running to a monumental 868 pages, The Romanovs is at one level, Montefiore says, a family story of triumph and tragedy, with all the things you expect – “sons killing their fathers, fathers killing their sons, mothers trying to steal the throne from the children, near incest, adultery, murder, torture and war”.
He cheerily admits too, that the Romanov tsar he most enjoyed writing about was Peter the Great who ruled from 1682 to 1725. “He was extraordinary in every way, so brilliant, yet so brutal it takes your breath away. For example, he had his ex-mistress, Mary Hamilton, executed then lifted her head up afterwards, kissed it, gave the crowd a lecture on her anatomy, dropped the head, walked off and then had it preserved in a bottle.”
Tsar Peter understood the requirements of autocracy like few others. And it is the invisible flow and flux of this “mysterious alchemy of power” – which, says Montefiore, is “always personal” – that he traces across three centuries to analyse its fundamental realities, examine its very core. Nor is autocracy a thing of the past, he argues.
“They believe not just in the divine right of kings but in the divine nature of Russia. And the Putin regime has really pushed this idea. When he took Crimea he said, ‘This was our Jerusalem.’ He regards the loss of the Soviet empire as the greatest tragedy of the 20th century and, of course, the Soviet empire was basically the Romanov Empire as well, and he is very aware of that.”
Indeed, one of the arguments of his book, says Montefiore, “is that Putin is really a kind of Stalin crossed with Tsar Nicholas I. He’s a hybrid of both and he is very aware of that idea … his ideologists are very aware of that, and so is the Orthodox Church.”
But he believes the most startling aspects of the book are its revelations about the anti-Semitism and political incompetence of Nicholas II and Alexandra, the last of the Romanovs, who were executed, together with their children, in Ekaterinburg in 1918. Until now, he declares, “They have been bathed in a romantic mythology as parents and as husband and wife. It is true that they were great family people but I decided to treat them completely as political characters, and the result isn’t pretty. The sheer depth and vicious nature of his anti-Semitism will shock readers.”
Montefiore remains fascinated by power, but he is far from enthralled by it. He is often invited to address world leaders on the nature of power. “They’re all fascinated by how power works … they’ve read my Stalin book and are fascinated by how Stalin managed things, and how his system worked – these are elected, democratic rulers, by the way. I think they crave power, and power destroys them, just as it destroyed each of the Romanovs.”
Already at work on an ambitious new world history, Montefiore remains as in thrall to storytelling as he was when, after years of reporting on the Soviet break-up as a freelance reporter, he penned his first history, Catherine the Great & Potemkin. “I love telling stories, but I don’t think I could write about a peaceful backwater. I enjoy writing about great crimes, great wars, great enterprises, larger than life characters,” he adds. “And Russia suits me like that, it suits the way I think.”
Follow Bron Sibree on Twitter @BronSibree
Book details
- The Romanovs: 1613 – 1918 by Simon Sebag Montefiore
EAN: 9780297852667
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