Quotes About Romanovs

There are several accounts, written or deposed, by the guards, executioners and inhumers of the Romanovs. One of the inhumers said that he could 'die in peace because he had squeezed the Empress's -----.'* *Pipes's note reads: 'Deposition by P. V. Kukhtenko in Solokov Dossier I, dated September 8, 1918; omission in the original.

The Russian empire, it is estimated, grew by fifty-five square miles (142 square kilometres) per day after the Romanovs came to the throne in 1613, or 20,000 square miles a year. By the late nineteenth century, they ruled one sixth of the earth's surface—and they were still expanding. Empire-building was in a Romanov's blood.

Its heart was the alliance between the Romanovs and the nobility who needed royal support to control their estates. Serfdom was the foundation of this partnership. The ideal of autocracy was in practice a deal whereby the Romanovs enjoyed absolute power and delivered imperial glory while the nobility ruled their estates unchallenged. The

the often bizarre, daft and self-defeating trajectory of the last Romanovs can be understood only through their ideology: sacred autocracy.

I was raised by maternal grandparents who were born in 1890 and 1899, respectively. They were British subjects; George V was the cousin of the tsar. The Romanovs were very real in their household.

No one knows how many Russians in all fled the homeland. Perhaps one million, perhaps many more. We are interested here in seventeen, the senior Romanovs, the grand dukes and grand duchesses who escaped the revolution.