The Last of the Tsars

A riveting account of the last eighteen months of Tsar Nicholas II’s life and reign from one of the finest Russian historians writing today. In March 1917,Nicholas IIthe last Tsar of All the Russiasabdicated and the dynasty that had ruled an empire for three hundred years was forced from power by revolution. Now Robert Servicethe eminent historian of Russiaexamines Nicholas’s life and thought from the months before his momentous abdication to his deathwith his familyin Ekaterinburg in July 1918. The story has been told many timesbut Service’s deep understanding of the period and his forensic examination of previously untapped sourcesincluding the Tsar’s diaries and recorded conversationsas well as the testimonies of the official inquiryshed remarkable new light on his troubled reignalso revealing the kind of Russia that Nicholas wanted to emerge from the Great War. The Last of the Tsars is a masterful study of a man who was almost entirely out of his depthperhaps even willfully so. It is also a compelling account of the socialeconomic and political ferment in Russia that followed the February Revolutionthe Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917and the beginnings of Lenin’s Soviet socialist republic.