Experimental Blog #19

Comments on the book "Little Mother of Russia - A Biography of Empress Marie Feodorovna" by Coryne Hall

What I most want to remember from this book is that this book is, as the title says, definitely a biography. Although the book is full of Russian and European 19th and 20th century history, the author, Coryne Hall, overwhelmingly writes about and consistently defends her subject, Marie Feodorovna. Of course, she honestly admits Marie Feodorovna's faults and errors.
I hope to understand and remember the history of Russia better, begining with the reign of Tsar Alexander II, who liberated the serfs, but was eventually assassinated by the terriorist organization that called itself "The People's Will". He was followed by Alexander III, Feodorovna's husband, making her the Empress, and Alexander III was followed by Nicholas II, Feodorovna's son.
Other things that I learned more about were: the Revolution of 1905, which was more widespread and violent than I had realized; and the intriguing and mysterious story of Gregory Efimovitch Rasputin. I am not quite sure if I acquired a much clearer understanding of the Bolshevik Revolution.
However, I learned about the flight of the now Dowager Empress and her very large household first to the Maryinski Palace in Kiev, and then to several places in the Crimea; where it seemed she was an on again off again prisoner of the Bolsheviks; and where, it seems, more than once she could have been executed, were it not for the circumstance that the Bolshevik groups were in considerable disagreement about what to do with her and all the other Romanovs.
In spite of the Dowager Empress's stubbornness, she finally agreed to exile, first in England, and then in Denmark{which was actually where she was from}.
There was also the interesting story of Anna Anderson, the fraudulent Anastasia, whose story and intrigues of everybody on all sides of the matter stirred up and divided the surviving Romanov family and many other people for many decades.
Finally, there was the immensely complicated background panorama of the long decline of aristocratic European society.