Long they ruled

The Romanovs: 1613-1918. By Simon Sebag Montefiore. Weidenfeld & Nicolson; 745 pages; £25. To be published in America by Knopf in May.

RULING Russia was not a tempting prospect in 1613, when the first Romanov reluctantly took the throne. Over the next three centuries the shrunken, war-torn principality of Muscovy became a colossal empire, though at a huge cost to the Romanovs’ long-suffering subjects—and to the family itself, where the currencies of dynastic politics included murder, torture and betrayal (sexual and otherwise), as well as habitual cruelty.

Simon Sebag Montefiore’s story starts with the miserable, melancholic Michael, dragged to the smouldering ruins of the Kremlin by feuding boyars who were desperate for unity in the face of defeat by mighty Poland. It features the greats: Peter, manically debauched, and Catherine, the “regicidal, uxoricidal German usurper”; and also dismal failures such as Alexander III, who ruled Russia as a “curmudgeonly landowner”. It concludes with the pathetic Nicholas II, the last tsar, deposed and hurriedly murdered alongside his wife and children (pictured) by the Bolsheviks in 1918. His ill-starred reign was redeemed only by the “grace, patience, humour and dignity” which the doomed royal family showed in their captivity.

The system rested on the idea that only “an all-powerful individual blessed by God” had the clout (the author prefers “effulgent majesty”) to run such a vast state, while also personifying the sacred mission of Orthodox Christianity. The key was delegation. Peter and Catherine, for all their whims and tyrannical ways, were superb at this: Catherine’s favourite, Grigory Potemkin, was an outstandingly gifted administrator; Alexander Suvorov an equally impressive military commander. The other monarchs mostly tried to run Russia themselves, with results ranging from the indifferent to the disastrous.

The author’s many fans will find much to please them. As with his previous books, notably on Stalin, Mr Sebag Montefiore, a British historical writer, has an eye for the telling detail which lifts an unfamiliar narrative. His mammoth history of Russia’s royal dynasty features many such vivid, amusing and surprising particulars. Indeed it is startlingly lubricious and gory. The abundant mutilations, executions and other horriblenesses which the principal characters inflicted on each other and their subjects are described in nightmarish detail. In particular, the private passions of the Romanov court, preserved in letters and diaries, are on public parade. A fortuitously placed wart on the penis of the “mad monk” Rasputin, whose scandalous behaviour and bad advice helped bring about the dynasty’s downfall, is cited as a possible reason for his success with aristocratic women.

Gore and sex aside, the author’s pen produces reams of fluent, sometimes sparkling prose. Many of his reflections on the Romanov era apply well to Vladimir Putin’s domains now: the “Russian pattern of behaviour”, he writes, is “servility to those above, tyranny to those below.” The Russian court was an entrepot of power: its role as a broker allowed participants to amass wealth and bonded them in shared loyalty. But it also allowed them to compete without resorting to civil war or revolution. That sounds pretty much like the modern Kremlin.

However, the complexity of the material is still daunting. Most readers will need to make full use of the family trees and cast lists placed helpfully at the start of each chapter. A great many names make very brief appearances. The colour illustrations help fix the main characters in the reader’s mind; a few more maps might have helped illustrate the ebb and flow of nations.

The focus is tightly on the intrigues of the court, and on the Romanovs’ role in European high politics. Economics, business, society and culture get only the skimpiest treatment. That is a pity. Alexander Etkind, an émigré historian, has argued that the root of Russia’s misfortunes is its natural wealth, which encourages its rulers to plunder the country, like colonial masters, rather than develop it. Yet despite its mostly dreadful rulers, the vast land did begin to modernise. The tragedy is that the later Romanovs were too scared, and in Nicholas II’s case also too out of touch, to start the reforms that could have saved them. That dilemma is as familiar as it is ancient.