August 03, 2019

"The Last Czars" is a Disgrace to Russian History


"The Last Czars" is a Disgrace to Russian History
Nicholas dances while Russia burns. Netflix via IMDB

I was recommended The Last Czars by a coworker, of all people. Upon learning that I studied Russian history, he said to me the following: “Oh, I love Russian history. I love Nicholas, Alexandra, Rasputin, the revolution — that’s my favorite period. Have you seen The Last Czars? I think it captures that period really well.”

With all due respect to my coworker, I am saddened that The Last Czars is what passes for Russian history in our society. The thing is, there’s Russian history, and then there’s Romanov hagiography. Russian history, like all history, recognizes the sheer complexity surrounding every event and every person it studies and sheds light on those nuances. Think Yuri Slezkine’s House of Government. Without even reading it, you can see its approach to a complex period in Russian history. It takes as its starting point a house (as the title says) and the loyal Bolsheviks who lived in it. Then, it uses documents to trace their lives and illuminate their context. Ultimately, Slezkine leverages evidence to construct an argument about the subtle but powerful ways Communism changed people’s relationships to each other. That’s what a work of history does: It makes an argument using specific evidence and reasoning that takes into account context.

Sure, The Last Czar isn’t pure history. But consider HBO’s Chernobyl. Chernobyl makes no pretenses to documentary, yet even Russian audiences praise its attention to historical and emotional detail. It examines a contentious historical event through the lenses of individuals, individuals with highly varied career paths and personal values. Some, like Masha Gessen, have criticized its portrayal of the Soviet system. But even the criticism has to rise to Chernobyl’s level of thoughtful construction. Gessen’s argument is specific, thorough, and deliberately presented, just like the show itself.

Unfortunately, The Last Czars has all the nuance of, well, a gunshot. Let’s start with Nicholas’ abdication scene — or scenes, rather, because the directors drag out Nicholas’ anguish over fifteen minutes. First, a generic General figure informs Nicholas that they want him to resign in favor of Alexei. The camera fixes on Nicholas’ stoically sad gaze. His voice breaks as he tells the general about Alexei’s hemophilia and how “surely we have a right to keep him for ourselves.” Then, Nicholas goes home, finds his wife weeping, and embraces her. Then, because we’re still not done milking the viewer’s pity, Nicholas sees Alexei, upon which he breaks down and falls to his knees while his son hugs him. “I’m so sorry,” Nicholas weeps.

 

Nicholas and Alexandra at Alexei's bedside in The Last Czars
Alexei is the show’s go-to for signaling “Look, don’t you feel so sorry for the Romanovs?” / Netflix via IMDB

It would be one thing if this were a soap opera. But The Last Czars is far from a soap opera. It markets itself as a “docuseries”, lending itself the air of objectivity. It even brings along real historians for the ride. Then it deploys scenes like Nicholas’ abdication scene(s). Any viewer with a heart can only come away with one conclusion: You should feel sorry for Nicholas and Alexandra, because they were just doing their best for the kids’ sake. And if you disagree? Then you’re as heartless as the Bolsheviks. This is not a levelheaded assessment of Nicholas’ reign. This is a manipulative way to shield the Romanovs from criticism. It’s a fact that Nicholas led his country into not one but two wars that cumulatively killed over a million people. One historian pointed out his tolerance of anti-Semitism. But no one’s going to bring that up now, are they?

Promo poster for The Last Czars
The Romanovs pose like martyrs in the poster
for this “docu-drama.” Objective much? / Netflix via IMDB

Everyone not a Romanov or Bolshevik is an afterthought. I don’t pity the Romanovs much, but I do pity the audience, because the year 1917 alone contains an ocean of stories, most of which are far more exciting than the Romanovs. “Aristocrat with no murdering experience tries to assassinate Rasputin”? That sounds like the premise of a screwball comedy or psychological thriller, not twenty minutes tacked to the end of an episode. Meanwhile, the real-life Kerensky wishes he could have been the Romanovs’ personal guard (as The Last Czars portrays him). Instead, he had to manage every emergency the Provisional Government faced. And it was an emergency a minute — runaway inflation, food shortages, the disastrous war inherited from Nicholas, land reform, the Petrograd Soviet, party politics, not to mention an attempted coup. It was like a Russian West Wing.

The people who get the shortest shrift of all from The Last Czars are ordinary people. “It’s not the people I’m worried about,” Alexandra says in episode 1, and that might as well be the show’s artistic statement. In its narrow-minded focus on the Romanovs, The Last Czars lumps the entire imperial population into one “people,” who only exist to inconvenience the tsar. In doing so, it neglects stories that are just as, if not more deserving of attention. Stories of peasants, many of whom become refugees because of the war. Stories of workers, some of whom the Bolsheviks radicalize, but some of whom just want to feed the kids. Aristocratic women, working women, women taking university courses. Priests, students, journalists, merchants, Jewish socialists, Ukrainian nationalists, pan-Muslim parties… the list goes on and on.

Nurses at Winter Palace. Still from Last Czars
When will these women get their own miniseries? / Netflix via IMDB

The Last Czars turns the mosaic of Russian history into black and white. It casts Russian history as a fight between the good guys (the Romanovs) and the bad guys (the Bolsheviks) — a fight that the bad guys won. It thereby perpetuates an insidious narrative: that Russia almost became a Western “civilized” nation but failed, instead falling to beastly Communist “others.” Not only is The Last Czars is a disgrace to Russian history, it is unoriginal and harmful. With no offense to my coworker, I hope that he never recommends The Last Czars to anyone else.


Further Reading

Those who want to actually understand the period 1905-17 may start with the following books:


You Might Also Like

1917 Diary
  • May 01, 2017

1917 Diary

In which we look at the revolutionary year through the eyes of the people living through it.
17 Myths of the Revolution
  • November 01, 2017

17 Myths of the Revolution

Every revolution needs its myths. The faithful must 
be inspired; successive generations must be enthused. 
We explore some myths about the “Great October Revolution” that persist even now, 100 years later.
Like this post? Get a weekly email digest + member-only deals

Some of Our Books

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

Steppe / Степь (bilingual)

This is the work that made Chekhov, launching his career as a writer and playwright of national and international renown. Retranslated and updated, this new bilingual edition is a super way to improve your Russian.
Russian Rules

Russian Rules

From the shores of the White Sea to Moscow and the Northern Caucasus, Russian Rules is a high-speed thriller based on actual events, terrifying possibilities, and some really stupid decisions.
A Taste of Chekhov

A Taste of Chekhov

This compact volume is an introduction to the works of Chekhov the master storyteller, via nine stories spanning the last twenty years of his life.
Tolstoy Bilingual

Tolstoy Bilingual

This compact, yet surprisingly broad look at the life and work of Tolstoy spans from one of his earliest stories to one of his last, looking at works that made him famous and others that made him notorious. 
Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar

Bears in the Caviar is a hilarious and insightful memoir by a diplomat who was “present at the creation” of US-Soviet relations. Charles Thayer headed off to Russia in 1933, calculating that if he could just learn Russian and be on the spot when the US and USSR established relations, he could make himself indispensable and start a career in the foreign service. Remarkably, he pulled it of.
Jews in Service to the Tsar

Jews in Service to the Tsar

Benjamin Disraeli advised, “Read no history: nothing but biography, for that is life without theory.” With Jews in Service to the Tsar, Lev Berdnikov offers us 28 biographies spanning five centuries of Russian Jewish history, and each portrait opens a new window onto the history of Eastern Europe’s Jews, illuminating dark corners and challenging widely-held conceptions about the role of Jews in Russian history.
Murder at the Dacha

Murder at the Dacha

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin has a problem. Several, actually. Not the least of them is the fact that a powerful Soviet boss has been murdered, and Matyushkin's surly commander has given him an unreasonably short time frame to close the case.
White Magic

White Magic

The thirteen tales in this volume – all written by Russian émigrés, writers who fled their native country in the early twentieth century – contain a fair dose of magic and mysticism, of terror and the supernatural. There are Petersburg revenants, grief-stricken avengers, Lithuanian vampires, flying skeletons, murders and duels, and even a ghostly Edgar Allen Poe.
The Latchkey Murders

The Latchkey Murders

Senior Lieutenant Pavel Matyushkin is back on the case in this prequel to the popular mystery Murder at the Dacha, in which a serial killer is on the loose in Khrushchev’s Moscow...

About Us

Russian Life is a publication of a 30-year-young, award-winning publishing house that creates a bimonthly magazine, books, maps, and other products for Russophiles the world over.

Latest Posts

Our Contacts

Russian Life
73 Main Street, Suite 402
Montpelier VT 05602

802-223-4955