Robert Massie’s Russian Rulers

I’ve just finished Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman by Robert Massie, and since it is the third and final biography of a Russian emperor or empress that I will read, I’d like to dedicate a post to applaud these three great books. The first book written by Massie on the subject was Nicholas and Alexandra, published in 1967. Interestingly, the author became interested in this family when his son was born with hemophilia, a condition which also plagued Nicholas’ son Alexei. The next book, published over a decade later, was the Pulitzer Prize-winning Peter the Great: His Life and World. The final book, published in 2011 when Massie was over eighty years old, was the book on Catherine the Great.

I happened to read the books in the order they were published. My memory from my time reading the first book was that the Romanovs were decent people, but they believed that it was their duty to be the rulers of Russia by hereditary right. Nicholas did not come across as haughty or condescending to his subjects. Basically, he was the one who lost the ultimate game of hot potato that occurs when a country does not reform itself enough to avoid a revolution.

The second book on Peter the Great was highly interesting. I find the time period interesting all by itself. When I read a book about someone born in the seventeenth century, I can’t help but think of how much different life would have been like back then. Of course, the most interesting thing about the book was the way it described in detail Peter’s foresight in modernizing Russia, gaining access to the Baltic, creating Saint Petersburg, and reforming religion and culture in his empire.

The final book on Catherine the Great was great. The character of Catherine was fascinating, and it was enjoyable to read about someone who was in difficulty as a young woman rise from that to a position of power, and to reward those who helped her, and remain benevolent as an autocrat. The fact that Catherine was overwhelmingly a force for good, but that she still failed to ultimately remove serfdom, just goes to show the difficulty in getting things done politically, even as an empress.

It is obvious that an enormous amount of research went into each book. Each one is quite long. This most recent book took me over a month to finish. But it was worth it to read the whole thing, as Massie doesn’t skip anything. The books all cover the early childhoods of these rulers, and explain the environment at the time and why these people became the people that they became. Reading these biographies, I felt like I was in the heads of these emperors and empresses, and that I understood the various pressures they were under, and how they determined their goals.

I think that after reading these books, one of the major takeaways for me was the gladness I feel for not being in a position of power like that. Whatever power that there is to be had, whatever money is available to an emperor, wouldn’t be worth having the family be perpetually in jeopardy of being murdered by someone who wants to take the throne, or put someone else on the throne. Even if there is little danger of that, the entire family dynamic is rarely well-developed in a royal household. Catherine’s own son Paul was taken away from her after his birth, to be raised by her husband’s aunt, the Empress Elizabeth, who was the daughter of Peter the Great.

As a consequence, Catherine did something similar for the birth of her grandson Alexander. Massie doesn’t mince words when it comes to the things that Peter and Catherine did, despite their greatness. They were still humans, and as such Robert Massie’s books give a great insight into their personalities, and how they shaped the Russian Empire.