On the sweltering summer night of July 16, 1918, in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg, a group of assassins led an unsuspecting Tsar Nicholas II of Russia, his wife, the Tsarina Alexandra, the desperately ill Tsarevich, and their four beautiful daughters, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, and Anastasia, into a basement room where they were shot and then bayoneted to death. This is the story of those murders, which ended three hundred years of Romanov rule and set their stamp on an era of state-orchestrated terror and brutal repression. The Last Days of the Romanovs counts down to the last, tense hours of the family’s lives, stripping away the over-romanticized versions of previous accounts. The story focuses on the family inside the Ipatiev House, capturing the oppressive atmosphere and the dynamics of a group—the Romanovs, their servants, and guards—thrown together by extraordinary events. Marshaling overlooked evidence from key witnesses such as the British consul to Ekaterinburg, Sir Thomas Preston, American and British travelers in Siberia, and the now-forgotten American journalist Herman Bernstein, Helen Rappaport gives a brilliant account of the political forces swirling through the remote Urals town. She conveys the tension of the watching world: the Kaiser of Germany and George V, King of England—both, like Alexandra, grandchildren of Queen Victoria—their nations locked in combat as the First World War drew to its bitter end. And she draws on recent releases from the Russian archives to challenge the view that the deaths were a unilateral act by a maverick group of the Ekaterinburg Bolsheviks, identifying a chain of command that stretches directly, she believes, to Moscow—and to Lenin himself. Telling the story in a compellingly new and dramatic way, The Last Days of the Romanovs brings those final tragic days vividly alive against the backdrop of Russia in turmoil, on the brink of a devastating civil war. Since the end of the Soviet Union, details about the murder of the Russian royal family in 1918 have emerged and inspired several accounts of the killings. Author Rappaport, a talented British writer of narrative history, telescopes the post-abdication story of the Romanovs into the two weeks preceding their deaths, during which the final elements of decision in Moscow and execution in the Siberian city of Ekaterinburg fell into place. As storyteller, Rappaport skillfully contrasts the ignorance of the family members of their impending doom with the preparations of the Bolsheviks on the scene. She renders astute personality portraits of the seven members of the family, noting especially the beauty of the daughters that, to a degree, underlies popular interest in and horror about what happened to the Romanovs. Such sentimentality was alien to Bolsheviks waging class war, however, and Rappaport describes the chain of command from Lenin to the firing squad with responsibility-fixing emphasis. Unavoidably ghastly in her last pages, Rappaport, whose research included visits to the murder and burial sites, has produced an emotionally powerful work of history. --Gilbert Taylor Praise for The Last Days of the Romanovs “The brutal 1918 massacre of the Romanov family may be familiar, but in Russian scholar Rappaport's hands, the tale becomes as shocking and immediate as a thriller. Drawing on new archives and forensics, she crafts a portrait of the final weeks of Russia's last imperial family, cramped in the House of Special Purpose in Ekaterinburg. Though Tsar Nicholas's rule was harsh, the love and religious devotion he and his family shared makes them sympathetic. The Romanovs are now saints in Russian Orthodoxy, symbols of faith and hope. This gripping read helps you understand why.”— People magazine (3 ½ stars) “Synthesizing a variety of sources, Rappaport details the Romanovs’ last two weeks. . . . How the last czar and his family died was one of Russia’s best-kept secrets for decades, and Rappaport spares none of the gory details of the panicked bloodbath . . . and botched burial of the corpses . . . this is an absorbing, lucid and authoritative work.” — Publishers Weekly “British historian Rappaport combines detailed scholarship with an engaging narrative style. . . . The book's most gripping sections describe the days and hours leading up to and including the family's execution. Rappaport spares few details . . . Solid political and social history, related with the vigor of a true-crime thriller.” — Kirkus Reviews “Rappaport fills out her story with vivid detail and superb characterization, building the tension and drama to its brutal climax, sparing no stomach-turning details. She draws us in so well, that we very nearly smell the dusty drapes and taste the sweat hanging thick in the air of that tragic Siberian summer. We can’t stop reading, wondering what will happen next, even though we know full well what happens next. Meticulously researched and intimately drawn, this is a must read for anyone inter