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A Life for the Tsar draws on a galaxy of witnesses both privileged and ordinary to offer a kaleidoscopic portrait of ceremony and disaster. Weaving together a tapestry of adventures and emotions, the vibrant narrative follows an uncertain Nicholas II and his bride Alexandra as they struggle with unwelcome ceremonial duties; eavesdrops on stuffy men in gold-braided uniforms as they plan the great pageantry; walks in the shoes of tourists eagerly discovering exotic and bewitching Moscow; records the opulent ceremonies of a doomed court; and experiences the horrific Khodynka disaster in mesmerizing detail. We follow renowned American journalist Richard Harding Davis, swooning over Empress Alexandra and bribing his way across Moscow on behalf of William Randolph Hearst; radical British reporter Aylmer Maude, whose acerbic pen eagerly chronicles the excesses he encountered; and a pair of young French cinematographers, sent to capture the ceremonies on film for the first time who unwittingly find themselves at the center of the Khodynka disaster. Imperious tantrums by the scandalous Grand Duke Sergei, the Tsar’s uncle, lead to tragedy; rumors swirl around the Bulgarian Prince who sleeps in his pink silk nightgown; the Tsar’s former mistress gleefully dances in a gala ballet before Nicholas II’s new wife; the Papal representative interrupts state banquets by spitting on his religious rivals; American tourists Emily Warren Roebling, who had supervised completion of the Brooklyn Bridge, Chicago Gilded Age hostess Bertha Palmer, and young Minneapolis debutante Kate Koon are enraptured by the staggering pageantry; diplomats ridicule American Ambassador Clifton Breckinridge as an Arkansas hick; and English missionary Mary Hickley and young factory worker Semen Kanatchikov look on in horror at bruised and bloodied corpses from Khodynka. These stories, obscure and often ignored, punctuate and puncture the carefully orchestrated ceremonies enacted by the Russian Court.
The gilded pageantry of a coronation and the devastating disaster on the dusty Khodynka field: these two radically disparate forces, shadowing each other like Titanic and its iceberg, form the dramatic narrative of A Life for the Tsar. The tragedy changed the coronation from fairytale to nightmare. It was a pivotal moment in Russian history: every move Nicholas II made after 1896, every effort to deal with the problems the empire faced, was viewed through the lens of his response to Khodynka. In turning triumph to disaster, the last Tsar unwittingly sowed the seeds of revolution.
For the first time, these events come vividly to life in A Life for the Tsar. Drawing on unpublished archival sources, rare private memoirs, obscure accounts, and contemporary media, a dramatic and engaging narrative reveals how three pivotal weeks in 1896 forever shaped perceptions of Nicholas II. A Life for the Tsar draws on extensive research to provide a comprehensive portrait of this critical moment in Russian history. The text includes new and important information from GARF in Moscow, including previously unpublished excerpts from Nicholas II’s diary, Romanov family documents, and other unique items; Imperial Court papers from GIAR (Gosudarstvennyi Istoricheskii Arkhiv Rossisskii, the State Historical Archives of the Russian Federation, in St. Petersburg; previously unpublished Romanov family letters from the Bakhmeteff Archive at Columbia University in New York City; and rare materials from the British Library Collections. The authors have also utilized more than a dozen rare, privately printed manuscripts, along with numerous memoirs, contemporary press accounts, and obscure pamphlets that give readers innumerable new perspectives and sources on the coronation and on the Khodynka tragedy.