The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion and the Fall of Imperial Russia

“In 1903—the same year as Nicholas’s costume ball—four out of every five Russians were peasants. And yet the upper classes knew next to nothing about them. They didn’t visit the peasants’ villages or deal with the hired laborers who worked their estates. Instead, they remained comfortably ensconced in luxurious St. Petersburg. From there it was easy to romanticize the peasants’ life. Most nobility (Nicholas and Alexandra included) envisioned peasants living in simple yet cozy huts, their ‘cheeks glowing with good health’; and their teeth ‘whiter than the purest ivory,’ gushed one Russian writer.” 

Here Fleming emphasizes the huge divide between the upper and lower classes in turn-of-the-century Russia. Not only does the noble minority lead a privileged existence that is worlds away from that of impoverished peasants, but these nobles don’t even understand the peasants’ true living conditions. Even the tsar, whose own policies have shaped the reality of peasant life, has no idea how his subjects are truly living. Rather, Nicholas “romanticize[s]” the peasant existence and leaves any closer interactions with the lower classes for his ministers and officials. This way, the tsar and his noble subjects can enjoy their own extravagant lifestyle without guilt.

“Nicholas’s family, the Romanovs, had sat on the Russian throne for almost three hundred years, ruling their subjects under a form of government called autocracy. In an autocracy, one person—in this instance, the tsar—holds all the power. The Romanovs claimed God had given them this power, had chosen them to rule the Russian people. As God’s representative on earth, they maintained, the tsar should be left to run the country according to his own ideas of duty and right.” 

The fact that Tsar Nicholas, like his ancestors before him, holds absolute, unchecked power over Russia is extremely important throughout The Family Romanov. When Nicholas chooses to deny basic rights to his people and leaves the governing of his country to ill-qualified ministers, citizens are expected to accept all his decisions. Moreover, Nicholas’s belief that God has given him the throne allows him to remain passive. Nicholas is willing to sit back and allow “God’s will” (43) to determine Russia’s fate, while he also justifies his people’s suffering as a fair punishment from God. As a result, Nicholas ignores the plight of his people and is eventually overthrown.