The Tsar S Guard

For more than two hundred years, the Tsars private and elite soldiers have been the core of order and stability in civilized Russia. The Imperial Life Guards were formed in 1690, and their reputation is legendary. In southern Ukraine in the 1850s, however, the historic canvas of decay and poisonous alliances are weakening traditional monarchies and governments. Political unrest abounds, and medieval processes are giving way to contemporary acts of insurrection, greed and disloyalty. Growing up in a small village, young Samuel Orloff is obsessed with learning everything he can about his fathers secret past, the Imperial Life Guards, and their mission. Amid a sea of chaotic change, Samuels father rescues Charles Kovnik, an injured Imperial Life Guard, from a creek near their home and nurses him back to life. Now mentored by Charles and bound by inseparable events beyond his control, Samuel discovers life paths are not always chosen as revelations about his familys history become just as important as the realization for his future. The Tsars Guard is the compelling story of a boys coming-of-age journey in mid-nineteenth-century Russia as he attempts to fulfill his dream of becoming one of the Tsars trusted Imperial Life Guards.

For more than two hundred years, the Tsar's private and elite soldiers have been the core of order and stability in civilized Russia. The Imperial Life Guards were formed in 1690, and their reputation is legendary. In southern Ukraine in the 1850s, however, the historic canvas of decay and poisonous alliances are weakening traditional monarchies and governments. Political unrest abounds, and medieval processes are giving way to contemporary acts of insurrection, greed and disloyalty. Growing up in a small village, young Samuel Orloff is obsessed with learning everything he can about his father's secret past, the Imperial Life Guards, and their mission. Amid a sea of chaotic change, Samuel's father rescues Charles Kovnik, an injured Imperial Life Guard, from a creek near their home and nurses him back to life. Now mentored by Charles and bound by inseparable events beyond his control, Samuel discovers life paths are not always chosen as revelations about his family's history become just as important as the realization for his future. The Tsar's Guard is the compelling story of a boy's coming-of-age journey in mid-nineteenth-century Russia as he attempts to fulfill his dream of becoming one of the Tsar's trusted Imperial Life Guards.

In the Russia of the tsars, people who criticized or questioned the autocratic prerogatives of the sovereign were brutally suppressed and sometimes actively persecuted. So imbedded was this official hostility to anyone hoping to change or even influence government policy, that even the most high-minded reformers came to understand that the only way they could succeed was to overthrow the regime. The author describes the activities of the most important dissidents and agitators from the reign of Ivan the Terrible to Nicholas II and the Communist Revolution in 1917. Many of these fascinating individuals were serious activists endeavoring to improve society; others were opportunistic scoundrels and adventurers. The author explores the causes that provoked them and the consequences they faced, and explains how time and time again the tsars were goaded into mistakes and over-reaction.

“Michael Farquhar doesn’t write about history the way, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin does. He writes about history the way Doris Kearns Goodwin’s smart-ass, reprobate kid brother might. I, for one, prefer it.”—Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist Scandal! Intrigue! Cossacks! Here the world’s most engaging royal historian chronicles the world’s most fascinating imperial dynasty: the Romanovs, whose three-hundred-year reign was remarkable for its shocking violence, spectacular excess, and unimaginable venality. In this incredibly entertaining history, Michael Farquhar collects the best, most captivating true tales of Romanov iniquity. We meet Catherine the Great, with her endless parade of virile young lovers (none of them of the equine variety); her unhinged son, Paul I, who ordered the bones of one of his mother’s paramours dug out of its grave and tossed into a gorge; and Grigori Rasputin, the “Mad Monk,” whose mesmeric domination of the last of the Romanov tsars helped lead to the monarchy’s undoing. From Peter the Great’s penchant for personally beheading his recalcitrant subjects (he kept the severed head of one of his mistresses pickled in alcohol) to Nicholas and Alexandra’s brutal demise at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Secret Lives of the Tsars captures all the splendor and infamy that was Imperial Russia. Praise for Secret Lives of the Tsars “An accessible, exciting narrative . . . Highly recommended for generalists interested in Russian history and those who enjoy the seamier side of past lives.”—Library Journal (starred review) “An excellent condensed version of Russian history . . . a fine tale of history and scandal . . . sure to please general readers and monarchy buffs alike.”—Publishers Weekly “Tales from the nasty lives of global royalty . . . an easy-reading, lightweight history lesson.”—Kirkus Reviews “Readers of this book may get a sense of why Russians are so tolerant of tyrants like Stalin and Putin. Given their history, it probably seems normal.”—The Washington Post

‘A timely and important book . . . he brings to it rare clarity and common sense. His book is a fast-paced account of the last sixteen months of the tsar’s life; brief, sharp, but laced with well-judged feeling for the dramas of the time.’ Catherine Merridale, Observer In March 1917, Nicholas II, the last Tsar of All the Russias, abdicated and the dynasty that had ruled an empire for three hundred years was forced from power by revolution. In this masterful and forensic study, Robert Service examines the last year Nicholas's reign and the months between that momentous abdication and his death, with his family, in Ekaterinburg in July 1918. Drawing on the Tsar's own diaries and other hitherto unexamined contemporary records, The Last of the Tsars reveals a man who was almost entirely out of his depth, perhaps even willfully so. It is also a compelling account of the social, economic and political foment in Russia in the aftermath of Alexander Kerensky's February Revolution, the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 and the beginnings of Lenin's Soviet republic.

“Michael Farquhar doesn’t write about history the way, say, Doris Kearns Goodwin does. He writes about history the way Doris Kearns Goodwin’s smart-ass, reprobate kid brother might. I, for one, prefer it.”—Gene Weingarten, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner and Washington Post columnist Scandal! Intrigue! Cossacks! Here the world’s most engaging royal historian chronicles the world’s most fascinating imperial dynasty: the Romanovs, whose three-hundred-year reign was remarkable for its shocking violence, spectacular excess, and unimaginable venality. In this incredibly entertaining history, Michael Farquhar collects the best, most captivating true tales of Romanov iniquity. We meet Catherine the Great, with her endless parade of virile young lovers (none of them of the equine variety); her unhinged son, Paul I, who ordered the bones of one of his mother’s paramours dug out of its grave and tossed into a gorge; and Grigori Rasputin, the “Mad Monk,” whose mesmeric domination of the last of the Romanov tsars helped lead to the monarchy’s undoing. From Peter the Great’s penchant for personally beheading his recalcitrant subjects (he kept the severed head of one of his mistresses pickled in alcohol) to Nicholas and Alexandra’s brutal demise at the hands of the Bolsheviks, Secret Lives of the Tsars captures all the splendor and infamy that was Imperial Russia. Praise for Secret Lives of the Tsars “An accessible, exciting narrative . . . Highly recommended for generalists interested in Russian history and those who enjoy the seamier side of past lives.”—Library Journal (starred review) “An excellent condensed version of Russian history . . . a fine tale of history and scandal . . . sure to please general readers and monarchy buffs alike.”—Publishers Weekly “Tales from the nasty lives of global royalty . . . an easy-reading, lightweight history lesson.”—Kirkus Reviews “Readers of this book may get a sense of why Russians are so tolerant of tyrants like Stalin and Putin. Given their history, it probably seems normal.”—The Washington Post

In December 1917, nine months after the disintegration of the Russian monarchy, the army officer corps, one of the dynasty’s prime pillars, finally fell—a collapse that, in light of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, historians often treat as inevitable. The Imperial Russian Army in Peace, War, and Revolution, 1856–1917 contests this assumption. By expanding our view of the Imperial Russian Army to include the experience of the enlisted ranks, Roger R. Reese reveals that the soldier’s revolt in 1917 was more social revolution than anti-war movement—and a revolution based on social distinctions within the officer corps as well as between the ranks. Reese’s account begins in the aftermath of the Crimean War, when the emancipation of the serfs and consequent introduction of universal military service altered the composition of the officer corps as well as the relationship between officers and soldiers. More catalyst than cause, World War I exacerbated a pervasive discontent among soldiers at their ill treatment by officers, a condition that reached all the way back to the founding of the Russian army by Peter I. It was the officers’ refusal to change their behavior toward the soldiers and each other over a fifty-year period, Reese argues, capped by their attack on the Provisional Government in 1917, that fatally weakened the officer corps in advance of the Bolshevik seizure of power. As he details the evolution of Russian Imperial Army over that period, Reese explains its concrete workings—from the conscription and discipline of soldiers to the recruitment and education of officers to the operation of unit economies, honor courts, and wartime reserves. Marshaling newly available materials, his book corrects distortions in both Soviet and Western views of the events of 1917 and adds welcome nuance and depth to our understanding of a critical turning point in Russian history.

A study of the Russian Empire at the peak of its military power and success (1762-1825), this important book examines how a country with none of the obvious trappings of modernization was able to significantly expand its territory. Russia's military and naval victories culminated in the triumphal entrance of Russian forces into Paris in 1814 in celebration of the defeat of Napoleon. Hartley's treatment is wide-ranging and discusses many aspects of the nature of the Russian state and society-not merely issues such as recruitment, but also institutional, legal, and fiscal structures of the state, the unique nature of Russian industrialization and social organization at the urban and village level, as well as the impact on cultural life. She covers the reign of two of Russia's most prominent rulers: Catherine II (1762-1796) and Alexander I (1801-25). How could a country lacking modernized structures-political, institutional, social, fiscal, economic, industrial, and cultural-sustain this level of military effort and support the largest standing army in Europe? What impact did the strain of this commitment of men and money, including the invasion of 1812, have on the state and society-particularly on those who were either conscripted or the dependents they left behind? Despite the success of the Russian state, by 1825 the strains would become almost unsustainable.