Journal Of A Russian Grand Duchess

She was the eldest daughter of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia - the Grand Duchess Olga Nikolaevna. In 1913, the tricentennial year of her family's dynastic rule, Olga was coming of age - turning 18 in early November, and her life was full of romance, pageantry and fun. This volume comprises diary entries from the full year, which allow the reader a unique glimpse into the daily domestic routines of the Russian imperial family just prior to the outbreak of the First World War.

Grand Duchess Maria Nikolaevna was the third daughter and middle child of Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, and 1913 was the tercentennial year of her family's dynastic rule-the last full year before the outbreak of World War I. In her journal, Maria documents the ceremony and celebrations of this important date in Imperial Russian history, while at the same time showing herself to have been a remarkably ordinary young girl who happened to be the daughter of the most powerful man in the world. Maria's journal records the daily routines of the Imperial family, from the mundane to the magnificent, allowing the reader a peek into the lost and distant world of the last Romanovs.

"'A Romanov diary' spans 50 years in the life of Royal Europe (1884-1934) during one of its most turbulent periods of history. Grand Duchess George (Marie) of Russia, writes of Emperors, Kings, Queens and Royal cousins in their everyday, private lives, as well as their intricate relationships which determined the course of history.

In August 1914, Russia entered World War I, and with it, the imperial family of Tsar Nicholas II was thrust into a conflict they would not survive. His eldest child, Olga Nikolaevna, great-granddaughter of Queen Victoria, had begun a diary in 1905 when she was ten years old and kept writing her thoughts and impressions of day-to-day life as a grand duchess until abruptly ending her entries when her father abdicated his throne in March 1917. Held at the State Archives of the Russian Federation in Moscow, Olga's diaries during the wartime period have never been translated into English until this volume. At the outset of the war, Olga and her sister Tatiana worked as nurses in a military hospital along with their mother, Tsarina Alexandra. Olga's younger sisters, Maria and Anastasia, visited the infirmaries to help raise the morale of the wounded and sick soldiers. The strain was indeed great, as Olga records her impressions of tending to the officers who had been injured and maimed in the fighting on the Russian front. Concerns about her sickly brother, Aleksei, abound, as well those for her father, who is seen attempting to manage the ongoing war. Gregori Rasputin appears in entries, too, in an affectionate manner as one would expect of a family friend. While the diaries reflect the interests of a young woman, her tone grows increasingly serious as the Russian army suffers setbacks, Rasputin is ultimately murdered, and a popular movement against her family begins to grow.

This biography of Xenia, sister of Nicholas II gives a new angle on the Romanov story and provides new information on relationships within the family after the Revolution. Important new letters and photographs are also included.

The Russian Great Reforms of the 1860s were the last major modernizing effort by the Romanov dynasty. From 1855 to 1861, Grand Duchess Elena, born Princess Charlotte of Württemberg (1807-1873), acted as the spokeswoman for the reform-minded circles of Russian society, bringing before her nephew Emperor Alexander II a group of civic-minded experts who formed the core of the committee that prepared the greatest and most complex of the reforms, the abolition of serfdom in Russia. The Grand Duchess’s involvement in these crucial events in Russian history highlights the considerable influence aristocratic women had in Russian society, quite unlike women of the same class and status in Western Europe. A study of the Grand Duchess Elena of Russia offers a new understanding of Russian and international events of the time, the Romanovs’ role in them, the degree of autonomy enjoyed by high-born women in Russia and the ways in which new ideas gained ground in the nineteenth-century Russian empire. Based on abundant and largely unused archival sources, published documents and literature of the period in French, Russian, German, Italian and English, this is the first book about Grand Duchess Elena and it expertly interweaves the story of a woman’s life with that of Imperial Russian high politics.

Olga Romanov lived a life full of romance and danger. Born into the doomed Romanov family in the late 19th century, she barely escaped the Bolshevik Revolution with her life. Never before seen letters and diary entries from Russian archives and family members cast new light on her daring escape across the Crimea, and reveal details of her miserable first marriage and subsequent love affair with the handsome officer who would become her second husband. A true tale of riches to rags, Olga lived on the proceeds of a spectacular cache of Faberge jewels smuggled out of Russia, eventually dying in relative poverty above a hair salon in a run down neighborhood of Toronto.