Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar

 

Alexander II: The Last Great Tsar – Edward Radzinsky

I knew virtually nothing about Alexander II when I picked up this book, and as I read through it, I kept asking the question: What exactly made this man great?   If anything, he seemed quite average at best. Maybe the author was comparing him against the other despotic leaders of the country’s tumultuous history?  I’ve read one other offering by author Edward Radzinsky on Nicholas II (called “The Last Tsar”; not a lot of creativity when naming these books) and that tsar was definitely a train wreck, so maybe we really do need to look at Alexander II in perspective to his historical peers.

Still, this was a very enjoyable piece of work.  I found myself immersed in history and wanting to know more – before, during, and after Alexander’s reign.  The best claim to the man’s fame is he eliminated serfdom (i.e., slavery) in Russia.  This is probably why the author refers to him as “great”. Sadly, all we have to do is look at when slavery was abolished in the United States to know that the transition from slave to free is not necessarily an easy one.  Yes, the initiative was good, but one could argue that the masses of enslaved people in Russia now had a lot of freedoms thrusted upon them, yet they weren’t exactly content with a few extra morsels of bread each day.  So revolution was in the air.  Even though “The Russian Revolution” wouldn’t take place until approximately 50 years after Alexander’s reign, the initial signs were beginning to pop up everywhere, and there were actually several assassination attempts on Alexander’s life; the last one being successful.

The author covers an awful lot of ground in this book, and there are some that claim that this book isn’t necessarily a straightforward biography of Alexander II, but rather an in depth look at the history during his time period. I suppose this is true, but in order to truly understand the man and his reign, I would argue such detailed diversions are necessary and even welcome.  We read an awful lot of the main instigators of the revolutionary movement and their in-depth motivations.  There’s an awful lot of the culture and arts discussed as well.  I read more in this book about people such as Fyodor Dostoevsky that I’ve ever come across anywhere else.  But these diversions are in fact critical and they did help set the mood.

And yes, there’s a lot of personal information about the ruler as well.  The most well-known and scandalous episode in the man’s history is when he fell in love with a much younger woman and essentially tossed his much older wife aside while hoping she would quietly die.  Much to the chagrin of everyone in the country, Alexander II had his own illegitimate family on the side that he took great pleasure in while his obedient subjects learned to look the other way.  Being a despotic tsar has its privileges.

The hardest part for me when reading Russian history is having to assimilate all of the complex names of the people (when I typed ‘Fyodor Dostoyevsky’ a few paragraphs earlier, I had to look up the correct spelling.)  When we read about so many of the royal family members as well as the masses of revolutionaries, authors, poets, and statesman, the names make your head spin and I had an awful time trying to remember if the person I read about on page 278 was the same person I read about earlier on, say, page 153.  It also doesn’t help when it seems as though every third male has the name “Alexander”, and many of the females are named “Alexandra”.  Plus, all of these individuals have middle names, royalty names, nicknames, and on and on and on. The author probably should have only used one variation of each person’s name, but maybe since he is Russian, he couldn’t see the hindrance that Western readers would encounter.    

Overall, though, this was a very colorful enjoyable journey into Russia’s past and I would definitely recommend it.  I should also point out that I enjoyed this book much better than the Nicholas II biography (‘The Last Tsar’) by this author, but it has been a while since I read that one, and it also seems as though there are many other books and narratives on Nicholas II due to his place in history.  I’m not sure how many narratives are available on Alexander II, but after reading this one, I can conclude that this book tells the novice everything they might want to know about the man, the people, and the place.