博客來First Edition: 6.14＂ x 9.21＂ Hardback, Black & White, Cream paper, Gloss laminate cover. 676 pages.
This volume contains two great public domain books from three authors; Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden - lady in waiting to the Empress Alexandra; Alexander Kerensky - Prime Minister; Pavel Bulygin - Investigative aide to Nikolai Sokolov. Two important historical works have been brought together with many additional footnotes and fillers and images added for a deeper explanation of the times.
＂This is the best volume yet, the word length is longer than I’d hoped, but these works belonged together, one account leads in to the next quite nicely. There are some contentions; Buxhoeveden’s is not the ’official’ biography of the Empress despite the Clichéd claims, nevertheless, it is accurate and incontestable. I visited her grave at Brompton Cemetery several times for approval to breathe new life in to her book, which I believed was answered when I saw new stems had pushed through the soil in the centre of the bed - The crows perched above also gave a chorus of approving caws as I came and left which I took to be a good omen. Kerensky too, is buried in London, at Acton cemetery near the Wimbledon tennis courts. One has to study Kerensky’s words as their meaning may have been sanitised somewhat, considering this book was translated by his second son Gleb. Finally, Bulygin’s book was well received, yet some of his claims have since been disproved which in itself does not denote any lacking of detail or padding out, as he wrote about the things he knew about back then, in 1928 when he published. - ’His handling of the telling of the actual ’tragedy’ is extremely well done . . . throughout one feels the singleness and the frankness of the die-hard.’ - The Border Watch, Southern Australia, 30 April 1935. This volume took an exorbitant amount of time to complete, considering others did all the writing, yet it became a work of love which I hope will be evident with the pleasure of reading it.＂ - Tony Abbott
Book One: Having an established status and influence at court as the Empress’s lady in waiting, Baroness Sophie Buxhoeveden placed herself under voluntary house arrest with the Empress and her family. Her account of what happened within the palace walls, at the home which became their prison, is regarded as the definitive version of events seen from the eyes of the Empress.
Book Two Part 1: Alexander Kerensky describes the political turmoil that preceded the execution of the prisoners. He observed how they coped with their ordeal and their folly in rejecting foreign help that could have saved them. He gives his reasons why some five months later he chose to move them to Tobolsk in Siberia. He mentions the failed rescue attempts and the approaching need for the Bolsheviks to do away with them before the White Army arrived in Ekaterinburg. Kerensky’s work is an essential component in the mind of a fearful Provisional Government of that time.
Book Two Part 2: Captain Pavel Bulygin also touches upon the failed rescue attempts, not least because he was involved in some of the planning for a rescue. He assisted the investigator Nikolai Sokolov from 1919 to uncover the truth of what had befallen the prisoners, whose whereabouts was still unaccounted for. Crucial details of the murders were uncovered by them both, leaving a definitive record of facts and evidence for posterity, more detailed than any other source. After the untimely death of Sokolov, Bulygin continued the research, and those findings are published here in The Murder of the Romanovs. This is a detailed account of the tragic events surrounding the murders of the royal family and members of their household, written by one of the officially sanctioned investigators
