Download or read book Romanov Riches written by Solomon Volkov and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2011-02-22 with total page 321 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In a sweeping cultural history of Russia from the rise of the house of Romanov in 1613 to its downfall at the hands of the Bolsheviks in 1917, Solomon Volkov effortlessly unwinds the twisted relationship between art and the royal family. Throughout the Romanov dynasty, Russia’s greatest artists and thinkers, painters and poets, composers and dancers, served two masters. Devotion to craft—or principle—could never wholly eclipse dependence on the tsars. Similarly, consumers of Russian culture could never respond without political consideration: Volkov recounts how, at the 1836 premiere of Glinka’s opera A Life for the Tsar, fashionable audiences watched Nicholas I in his private box to see how they ought to react. He wept, and they wept accordingly. In this spellbinding story, we watch the great figures of Russian history clash. Alexei, father of Peter the Great, befriended the writer Avvakum only to banish him; the next tsar, Fedor, had Avvakum burned alive. Using her notorious charms, Catherine the Great masterfully wielded political control over her culture industry. For his part, Pushkin became the first favored artist to resist the tsar’s influence. His poem “To Liberty” is cherished as a revolutionary work of dissent. But even Pushkin’s genius went unspared: Alexander tired of the poet’s literary and amorous freethinking and banished him from St. Petersburg. Romanov Riches is a work of epic scale that never sacrifices individual characters for broader themes. Gogol, Dostoevsky, and Tolstoy are presented in a devilishly intricate dance with their royal patrons. A truly essential work for anyone who wants to understand Russia’s passionate devotion to its most important artists, it is the prequel to Volkov’s acclaimed work The Magical Chorus: A History of Russian Culture from Tolstoy to Solzhenitsyn.
Download or read book The Lost Fortune of the Tsars written by William Clarke and published by Macmillan. This book was released on 1995-12 with total page 356 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: At its peak before the first world war, the fortune of the Romanovs of Russia has been calculated at over 45 billion dollars. It included fabulous state jewels, exquisite Faberge eggs, the palaces in and around St. Petersburg and the Crimea, the royal yachts and trains, and millions in Tsarist bank accounts in London, New York, and elsewhere. Since the secret murders of Nicholas and Alexandra and their family in 1918, and the subsequent, and controversial, discovery of their remains, the mystery persists: What happened to all that wealth? Questions surrounding the lost fortune are inevitably tied up with the issue of just who was killed that terrible summer's night in 1918 at Ekaterinburg. William Clarke goes to the heart of the Romanov story, to the Central State Archives in Russia, which for three-quarters of a century had been filed away in secrecy, and is only now open to investigation. The result of over twenty years of research, Clarke's quest reveals the truth behind claims to the Tsarist fortune made by the likes of Anna Anderson and Michel Goleniewski, and sheds new light on this most intriguing of historical mysteries.
Download or read book Money of the Russian Revolution written by Mikhail V. Khodjakov and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2014-11-19 with total page 265 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: During the Russian Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, more than twenty thousand kinds of banknotes were used throughout the vast expanse of the former Russian Empire. At that time, money was issued not only by the official authorities, such as the Imperial Government, the Provisional Government, and, later, the Bolshevik Government, but also by Generals Denikin, Wrangel, and Yudenich, Admiral Kolchak, Atamans Semyonov and Petliura, Hetman Skoropadskyi, and many other great and small rulers of Russia. Russian money was manufactured in Great Britain, Germany, Sweden, and the United States. To some degree, money served as a manifesto of the issuing government, reflected in the various symbols depicted on the banknotes. Using new archival data, this book expands and, in a number of cases, revises the well-established view of the daily life of people during the Revolution, and dispels the settled myth about how the natural economy prevailed in the years of the Russian Civil War. The book presents unique illustrations taken from the author’s private collection: the “Romanov” banknotes; postage stamps used as currency; “Duma” money; and 1917 banknotes known as “kerenkies”, “morzhovkies”, “tchaikovkies”, “Northern rubles”, “krylatkies”, “rodzyankies”, “the Don rubles”, and “kolchakovkies”. Some of these banknote designs were made by well-known Russian artists, such as Ivan Bilibin, Sergey Chekhonin, and Georgy Narbut. The book is addressed to historians, economists, and all readers interested in Russian history and economy.
Download or read book Hidden Treasures of the Romanovs written by William Malpas Clarke and published by National Museums of Scotland. This book was released on 2009 with total page 196 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The story of the Romanov jewels and of Englishman Albert Stopford who risked his life to smuggle millions of pounds worth of of the precious gems from Russia to London in 1917.
Download or read book Romanoff Gold written by William Malpas Clarke and published by History Press. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Romanoff Gold
Download or read book Monet Tchaikovsky Zola and the World They Made written by Kristof Haavik and published by Cambridge Scholars Publishing. This book was released on 2022-06-20 with total page 443 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book tells the story of three young men: two French, one Russian; all born the same year, when European culture was moving from Romanticism to something else in painting, music, and literature. Influenced by the environment from which they came, all three grew to take a leading role in moving the arts in a bold new direction. It was the age when Impressionism reinvented what painting could be, when Naturalism changed how fiction is written, and when Russia moved from the edges of European society to the vital role it has played ever since. Leading, guiding, determining this new course were Monet, Tchaikovsky, and Zola. Parallel biographies of these three artistic geniuses follow them from the magic year of their birth to the point when they established themselves as bold, original creators in the early 1870s. The book explores how they chose to follow careers in creative art, how each of them came to play such a central role in their respective domains, and how those arts interacted and influenced each other. As they move through the cultural world of 19th century Europe, a panorama appears of the rich intellectual environment of France and Russia in that period, as well as the unique experiences and talents that led all three to their towering position in modern culture. Often considered separately, art, music, and literature come together in this study to offer a multifaceted view of a key era in the development of modernism in all the arts.
Download or read book Four Sisters The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses written by Helen Rappaport and published by Pan Macmillan. This book was released on 2014-03-27 with total page 529 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Award-winning and critically acclaimed historian Helen Rappaport turns to the tragic story of the daughters of the last Tsar of all the Russias, slaughtered with their parents at Ekaterinburg.
Download or read book The Romanovs written by Simon Sebag Montefiore and published by Knopf. This book was released on 2016 with total page 817 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "The acclaimed author of Young Stalin and Jerusalem gives readers an accessible, lively account--based in part on new archival material--of the extraordinary men and women who ruled Russia for three centuries."--NoveList.
Download or read book Russian Notions of Power and State in a European Perspective 1462 1725 written by Endre Sashalmi and published by Academic Studies PRess. This book was released on 2022-10-25 with total page 474 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Winner of the 2023 Marc Raeff Book Prize; A 2023 REFORC Book Award Longlist TitleThis book highlights the main features and trends of Russian “political” thought in an era when sovereignty, state, and politics, as understood in Western Christendom, were non-existent in Russia, or were only beginning to be articulated. It concentrates on enigmatic authors and sources that shaped official perception of rulership, or marked certain changes of importance of this perception. Special emphasis is given to those written and visual sources that point towards depersonalization and secularization of rulership in Russia. A comparison with Western Christendom frames the argument throughout the book, both in terms of ideas and the practical aspects of state-building, allowing the reader to ponder Russia’s differentia specifica.
Download or read book History s Greatest Heist written by Sean McMeekin and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 2008-12-17 with total page 331 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: How Lenin’s regime turned Russia’s priceless cultural patrimony into armored cars, trains, planes, and machine guns Historians have never resolved a central mystery of the Russian Revolution: How did the Bolsheviks, despite facing a world of enemies and leaving nothing but economic ruin in their path, manage to stay in power through five long years of civil war? In this penetrating book, Sean McMeekin draws on previously undiscovered materials from the Soviet Ministry of Finance and other European and American archives to expose some of the darkest secrets of Russia’s early days of communism. Building on one archival revelation after another, the author reveals how the Bolsheviks financed their aggression through astonishingly extensive thievery. Their looting included everything from the cash savings of private citizens to gold, silver, diamonds, jewelry, icons, antiques, and artwork. By tracking illicit Soviet financial transactions across Europe, McMeekin shows how Lenin’s regime accomplished history’s greatest heist between 1917 and 1922 and turned centuries of accumulated wealth into the sinews of class war. McMeekin also names names, introducing for the first time the compliant bankers, lawyers, and middlemen who, for a price, helped the Bolsheviks launder their loot, impoverish Russia, and impose their brutal will on millions.
Download or read book The Romanov Ransom written by Clive Cussler and published by Penguin. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 402 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Treasure-hunting team Sam and Remi Fargo’s search for a Romanov fortune brings them into perilous contact with an ambitious neo-Nazi clan in this New York Times bestselling adventure. In 1918, a ransom of enormous size was paid to free the Romanovs from the Bolsheviks, but, as history knows, the Romanovs died anyway. And the ransom? During World War II, the Nazis stole it from the Russians, and after that--it vanished. Until now. When a modern-day kidnapping captures the attention of husband-and-wife team Sam and Remi Fargo, the couple soon learn that these long-lost riches may be back in play, held in trust by the descendants of a Nazi guerrilla faction called the Werewolves. It is their mission to establish the Fourth Reich, and their time is coming soon. As the Fargos follow the trail across Europe, Northern Africa, and South America, they know only one thing. This quest is greater than anything they have ever done--it is their chance to make someone answer for unspeakable crimes, and to prevent them from happening again.
Download or read book Nicholas and Alexandra written by Robert K. Massie and published by Random House. This book was released on 2011-11-08 with total page 663 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A “magnificent and intimate” (Harper’s) modern classic of Russian history, the spellbinding story of the love that ended an empire—from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Peter the Great, The Romanovs, and Catherine the Great “A moving, rich book . . . [This] revealing, densely documented account of the last Romanovs focuses not on the great events . . . but on the royal family and their evil nemesis. . . . The tale is so bizarre, no melodrama is equal to it.”—Newsweek In this commanding book, New York Times bestselling author Robert K. Massie sweeps readers back to the extraordinary world of the Russian empire to tell the story of the Romanovs’ lives: Nicholas’s political naïveté, Alexandra’s obsession with the corrupt mystic Rasputin, and little Alexis’s brave struggle with hemophilia. Against a lavish backdrop of luxury and intrigue, Massie unfolds a powerful drama of passion and history—the story of a doomed empire and the death-marked royals who watched it crumble.
Download or read book Former People written by Douglas Smith and published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux. This book was released on 2012-10-02 with total page 763 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Epic in scope, precise in detail, and heart-breaking in its human drama, Former People is the first book to recount the history of the aristocracy caught up in the maelstrom of the Bolshevik Revolution and the creation of Stalin's Russia. Filled with chilling tales of looted palaces and burning estates, of desperate flights in the night from marauding peasants and Red Army soldiers, of imprisonment, exile, and execution, it is the story of how a centuries'-old elite, famous for its glittering wealth, its service to the Tsar and Empire, and its promotion of the arts and culture, was dispossessed and destroyed along with the rest of old Russia. Yet Former People is also a story of survival and accommodation, of how many of the tsarist ruling class—so-called "former people" and "class enemies"—overcame the psychological wounds inflicted by the loss of their world and decades of repression as they struggled to find a place for themselves and their families in the new, hostile order of the Soviet Union. Chronicling the fate of two great aristocratic families—the Sheremetevs and the Golitsyns—it reveals how even in the darkest depths of the terror, daily life went on. Told with sensitivity and nuance by acclaimed historian Douglas Smith, Former People is the dramatic portrait of two of Russia's most powerful aristocratic families, and a sweeping account of their homeland in violent transition.
Download or read book The Shostakovich Wars written by and published by Ho and Feofanov. This book was released on with total page 326 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book Jewels of the Romanovs written by House of Romanov and published by Corcoran Gallery Of Art. This book was released on 1997 with total page 76 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Catalog of the exhibition held at the Corcoran Gallery of Art and other American venues.
Download or read book After the Romanovs written by Helen Rappaport and published by Scribe Publications. This book was released on 2022-03-29 with total page 205 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A TLS and Prospect Book of the Year From the New York Times bestselling author of The Romanov Sisters comes the story of the Russian aristocrats, artists, and intellectuals who sought freedom and refuge in the City of Light. Paris has always been a city of cultural excellence, fine wine and food, and the latest fashions. But it has also been a place of refuge for those fleeing persecution — never more so than before and after the Russian Revolution and the fall of the Romanov dynasty. For years, Russian aristocrats had enjoyed all that Belle Epoque Paris had to offer, spending lavishly when they visited. It was a place of artistic experimentation, such as Diaghilev’s Ballets Russes. But the brutality of the Bolshevik takeover forced Russians of all types to flee their homeland, sometimes leaving with only the clothes on their backs. Arriving in Paris, former princes could be seen driving taxicabs, while their wives who could sew worked for the fashion houses, their unique Russian style serving as inspiration for designers such as Coco Chanel. Talented intellectuals, artists, poets, philosophers, and writers struggled in exile, eking out a living at menial jobs. Some, like Bunin, Chagall, and Stravinsky, encountered great success in the same Paris that welcomed Americans such as Fitzgerald and Hemingway. Political activists sought to overthrow the Bolshevik regime from afar, while double agents plotted espionage and assassination from both sides. Others became trapped in a cycle of poverty and their all-consuming homesickness for Russia, the homeland they had been forced to abandon.
Download or read book Seven Myths of the Russian Revolution written by Jonathan Daly and published by Hackett Publishing. This book was released on 2023-02-09 with total page 218 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This fascinating volume is a major contribution to our understanding of the Russian Revolution, from World War I to consolidation of the Bolshevik regime. The seven myths include the exaggeration of Rasputin's influence; a purported conspiracy behind the February Revolution; the treasonous Bolshevik dependence on German support; the multiple Anastasia pretenders to the royal inheritance; the antisemitic claims about 'Judeo-Bolsheviks'; distortions about America’s intervention in the civil war; and the 'inevitability' of Bolshevism. In each case the authors analyze the facts, uncover the origins of the myth, and trace its later perseverance (even in contemporary Russia). To assist readers, the volume includes three reference guides (people, terms, dates), nine maps, and twenty-nine illustrations. The result is immensely valuable for undergraduate courses in Russian history." —Gregory L. Freeze, Raymond Ginger Professor of History, Brandeis University
