June 25, 2005

• Beautiful. Thanks languagehat. Besides being royal, I fail to see what sort of dubious deeds the Tzar was guilty of. Actually, from the letters he comes off as a pretty decent fellow. I mean, if they had to assasinate someone, I would have happily (via time machine) sent them George W. or Prince Charles, both whom much more richly deserve the treatment the poor Romanovs got.
• Oh, and I saw Russian Ark. Frankly I was both bored and confused most of the time. I believe it would have been better appreciated by a student of Russian history. Actually, the distributor should have put together a "viewer's guide" that would illuminate all the subtext and historical references to the uninitiated.
• Actually, the distributor should have put together a "viewer's guide" that would illuminate all the subtext and historical references to the uninitiated. I completely agree, and I hope they put that sort of thing in the DVD (which I'm dying to own). As for Nicky, he was a decent enough fellow in his limited way; he would have made a good Guards officer, and seems to have been happiest when inspecting regimental parades. But he was a terrible tsar and basically deserved whatever he got, however harsh a verdict that may sound. I don't think we can judge rulers the way we judge our neighbors; being a "good guy" isn't enough. He consciously rejected the liberalization and modernization Russia desperately needed and (egged on by his awful wife, who wrote to Queen Victoria: "You are mistaken, my dear grandmama; Russia is not Enlgand. Here we do not need to earn the love of the people. The Russian people revere their tsars as divine beings...") tried to recreate a supposed golden age of pure autocracy, with the tsar saying and doing things as God inspired him to and everybody else automatically falling into line. "If we could only get rid of the Jews/ socialists/ agitators/ unbelievers, the goodness and obedience of the common people would shine through and Russia would flourish..." That kind of crap. The very start of his reign showed what kind of man and ruler he was: when a disastrous accident at his coronation saw 1,400 people suffocated and crushed to death, the tsar continued with the celebrations and even attended a ball given by the French Ambassador (at that time the Marquis de Montebello); for the next few days the scheduled festivities went on as though nothing had happened. The thinking Russian public never forgave him, and I don't think we should either.
• Oh. Good to know. But can I still send Bush and Prince Charles in that time machine?
• Absolutely! Russia is not Enlgand Uh, and England isn't Enlgand either. Sigh.
• Another great link, thanks languagehat. I saw Russian Ark too, and enjoyed it by just letting myself fall into it, without trying to understand everything that was going on too much beyond the my fairly limited knowledge of Russian history or art. Just absorbed the sound and colour and everything (particularly the dancing, which was hypnotic, in a way). I'd be very pleased to own a DVD with a proper viewer's guide, though, as I could tell there was so much more to the movie and I was quite interested in it.
• Heh! )))!!! Just back from visiting Anna Byrubova's house, where I had the unexpected pleasure of seeing the Empress decked in her famous evening gown, jewels, and sturgeon.
• "...Before dinner I was riding a bicycle and fell down as I ran into one of my dogs..." That heartless bastard!! Such modest opulence. After seeing the Mauve room in the Alexander Palace I think I'm glad most of the other pictures were black & white. The decadance! That painting of Nicholas I in the Portrait Hall must be 25 ft tall!! Actually, when I was at school I somehow managed to gravitate between a couple of different cliques. One was the debauched smokers that hid behind the bike shed at lunchtime. The other was the elitist language (heh: French) students who had "Tsar Nicky" as their veritable patron, for reasons I've since forgotten. I feel so dirty now. Well done languagehat. You've stolen another hour from my life! (but I could swim in there for days, there's so much)
• languagehat, so far, I haven't found anything in your links that would make me agree that Nicholas "deserved whatever he got." Maybe he and the family "deserved" exile, but he didn't seem to be actively evil - mostly just distanced from his subjects and too swaddled and inattentive to understand that that could be a problem. I'll keep looking, since my knowledge of Russian history is superficial. but, so far, I can't get up enough anger at the last of the Romanovs to want them to have been murdered. Though, I have to admit that the fates of France's Louis and Marie Antoinette distress me a bit less, though they may have been equally swaddled. So, now, I'll have to get into comparative research to determine what that means. You're a hard taskmaster, Mr. hat. If it's just because the "Marseillaise" is such a rousing song, I'll be very embarrassed. On the other hand, I do think I understand why the revolutionists thought it wise to kill the royal family. I'm just not sure that it was the right thing to do, from my own dweebish perspecitve. But the executioner's tale struck me as both sad and funny. Everything that could go wrong, did. And, maybe because those involved weren't really angry enough to do it well.
• No one ever deserves to die like that.
• so far, I haven't found anything in your links... Well, no, you wouldn't, because the Alexander Palace site is awash in nostalgia for the Old Regime -- a syndrome I fully understand, considering what came after it, but it's not going to provide you with much historical perspective. If you want to read up on the subject, I suggest A People's Tragedy by Orlando Figes -- it's long, but will give you a very good idea of what happened in Russia in the first couple of decades of the last century. And let me make myself clear about "deserving it": I don't believe in capital punishment for anyone, and I agree with jb that "No one ever deserves to die like that." I simply mean that if one believes that there is such a thing as a ruler deserving to be killed (which I think most people do), then Nicholas II (though not, of course, his family) deserved his fate. In other words, I'm attacking the "but he was such a nice guy!" position; sure he was a nice guy if you were part of the family, but otherwise he was a shit, and there's no reason to cut him slack because he wrote sweet nothings to his wife. I hope that's clearer than my earlier one-sentence summary.