Nyet! Book review: Candace Fleming's 'Family Romanov'

On July 17, 1918 the Romanov family of seven and their servants were murdered at this site in Yekaterinburg, Russia which was then the Ipatiev House. In later years, the Politburo and Premier Boris Yeltsin resisted the growing sacredness of the site and the pilgrims who visited the Ipatiev House and ordered it torn down in 1977. In its place, one of the largest churches in Russia, the Church on the Blood was erected.  It opened in 2003/Patricia Leslie

This statue honors the memory of the Romanov children, Olga, Tatiana, Maria, Anastasia, and Alexei at Ganina Yama where the bodies of the children, their parents, and servants were thrown into a pit, 9.5 miles from the murder site/Patricia Leslie

Lily fields at the Ganina Yama pit where the Bolsheviks threw the bodies which they burned with acid for two days before moving them to their second graves, a field 4.5 miles away. When this picture was made 100 years after the family assassinations, large photographs of family members hung on the wooden walkway which surrounded the lily field. Above are two of the Romanov daughters. Every year at the Church of the Blood in Yekaterinburg, thousands gather for services on the anniversary of the murders and then walk four hours to the iron pit at Ganina Yama for more ceremony/Patricia Leslie

The lily field at Ganina Yama with Nicholas II pictured at far left/Patricia Leslie

Fearing the Whites would find the bodies, the Bolsheviks moved them 4.5 miles from Ganina Yama to a field across these railroad tracks, the second burial site. This site was discovered in the late 1970s and kept secret until the Russian government changed in 1989/Patricia Leslie

 The second burial site of the Romanovs/Patricia Leslie

The entrance to the Chapel of St. Catherine the Martyr inside the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, St. Petersburg, the third and last burial site of the Romanovs/Patricia Leslie

The Chapel of St. Catherine the Martyr, the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, St. Petersburg, with the remains of the Romanovs and their servants, now saints of the Russian Orthodox Church/Patricia Leslie

At the Cathedral of Saints Peter and Paul, St. Petersburg/Patricia Leslie



It's as if a publisher ordered a writer to find the most negative research possible and turn it into a book, and that's exactly what Candace Fleming did with her 2014 The Family Romanov: Murder, Rebellion, and the Fall of Imperial Russia.

Fleming and her team found all things bad they could possibly locate about the Romanovs and then packed them into her book. Only when the family begins the last leg of their journey to Siberia and certain death, does Fleming show any sympathy and, maybe a little remorse, over the outcome.  

She describes the five children as "young savages" whose parents cared little about their children's education (not true). She ridicules an eight-year-old's behavior (show me a perfect eight-year-old), and the grammar of a 13-year-old. Tsk, tsk.

From criticizing the children to sneering at the family's pets, clothing, languages, childcare, schooling and illnesses, Fleming goes overboard to paint the family as n'er do wells, dilettantes with nothing more to do than smoke (Nicholas), frown and lay around (Alexandra), ignore their offspring and fail to keep up with their studies (the children).  (I suppose Fleming has never been a parent.) 

What was good about the Romanovs?  Oh, yes, the women played nursemaid during the War.

Even the speaker's condescending attitude makes its way onto the pages while she reads the book, no doubt given instruction to read in a haughty manner. She succeeds!

Designed to influence young readers, it's no wonder adults are not Fleming's market since anyone with a smidgen of Romanov knowledge would quickly recognize this portrayal as a lopsided, petty picture of a family sacrificed on the altar of politics.

On her website Fleming carries a trailer for the book which makes light of the family and their plight, accompanied by whimsical music.

Hundreds of books have been written about the family and this sad chapter of Russian history which elicit our sympathy and attempt to understand rather than ridicule. Who else does this? It may be the first time Fleming has been compared to Trump.
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At the think tanks: Dr. Fiona Hill

Fiona Hill/Wilson Center

Yes, that Fiona Hill. The one who testified at Trump's impeachment trial.

A former member of the National Security Council (2017-2019), she is a senior fellow at Brookings who spoke last week on a webcast hosted by the Kennan Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. 


Kennan director, Matthew Rojansky, led the discussion in a program titled: The Putin Profile: A Conversation with Dr. Fiona Hill.

Fiona Hill, center left, next to John Bolton, then U.S. National Security Advisor, meeting with Vladimir Putin, across the table, and other Russian leaders at the Kremlin, June 27, 2018/Wikimedia Commons, Kremlin.ru, CC

Vladimir Putin has practically sucked all the "oxygen" out of Russia with his international agenda and his neglect of domestic affairs, Dr. Hill began her talk. Hence, demonstrations throughout Russia (particularly in the Far East).

"Soviet times" had many more "checks and balances," but since 2000, Putin has become "the state."

Rather than paying attention to Russia, Putin focuses on the world at large, vying to become an "elder statesman." He wants to regain Russia's "seat at the table" and get Russia back in the mix as a great power with big global ambitions which explains his interest in Syria, Venezuela, Libya, the Middle East, and Africa. 

"'Hey!'" Putin says (quoting Dr. Hill): "'We've still got the ability to project force" and "be at the table."

He's "obsessed" with the U.S., but this "mud wrestling" does not advance his program.

One of the reasons Putin's leadership role in Russia was extended until possibly 2036 by approval last month of constitutional amendments, is because he was (is?) "increasingly seen as a "'lame duck.'"

"Where are all the fresh ideas?" to make Russia great? Perpetual cycles of conflict are "not very helpful." 

Answering a question from a viewer about Trump's  re-election, Dr. Hill said Putin has more to gain by "upsetting America" and "sowing discord" which will be more difficult for Russia to achieve if there's a large voter turnout in the U.S.

"It's clear he wants to see a weaker U.S. president no matter who he (sic) is." A "fairly diminished U.S. president" will be good for Russia. 

"The more we're in a fight with Russia," she said (she became a U.S. citizen in 2002), "the less we can focus on bigger issues."  Arms control is a "necessary endeavor."

The "heavy breathing" and "hysteria we have" in the U.S. about Russia cannot compare to what "we" should be focusing on when it comes to China.

She has met Putin several times and "in some respects, what you see is someone who's grown much more comfortable" in his role(s).

"He's decided to put on many faces," a man "who has thought a lot about his brand" (which threatens to grow stale), riding shirtless on a horse. All these actions "appear deliberate to signal his vigor to the rest of the world, because, 'Hey! Don't mess with me!'" is the message he tries to convey.

She was not saying, she emphasized, that "he's lost his edge," but he's "kind of lost [with] what's going on domestically."  

Mentioned several times during the conversation was her book, Mr. Putin: Operative at the Kremlin (2013), co-authored with Clifford Gaddy.

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Trump cartoon idea: "It is what it is"

/Patricia Leslie


He leaps into his own grave where a tombstone sits nearby with the words:  "It is what it is" above the birth and death years, 2017-2021.

He wears a suit with long tie (almost to his feet, nearly causing him to trip) and long hair flying. He hugs an American flag, taking it down with him.

In this cemetery at Mar-A-Lago are a few palm trees and grave holes, waiting for the stacked caskets nearby to be lowered inside them. In front of hearses outlining the scene, stand notable Republicans (McConnell, Graham, Pence, Collins) with their heads bowed. A flag waves on a pole:  "RIP, Republican Party."

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Russian cemeteries, here and there

The Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie

The "old" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

 The Russian Orthodox Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie


I present to you three Russian cemeteries, one in Moscow (Novodevichy), one in St. Petersburg (Tikhvin), and one in Sitka, Alaska (the Russian Orthodox Cemetery), each a gem, each with its own distinct characteristics, each to welcome its existence and revealing histories filled with the characters who occupy the grounds. 

The overgrowth and abundant greenery in Sitka is romantic to some. Tikhvin's age and remarkable count of hundreds of buried artists capture hearts. My favorite though is Novodevichy, a calming place, a soothing application to mental spirits with its parklike setting and individually sculptured grave markers. 

It's easy to spend hours at the cemetery, a common pastime of Russians who wander amidst the paths, greenery, and tall pines, admiring the artworks, considering the lives of famous Russians, many who led turbulent lives, but now lay quiet.

Compare Novodevichy to Arlington National Cemetery and its uniformity. Novodevichy is graves gone wild!  

It has 27,000 plots, and unlike our cemeteries, it's "alive" with graves of hundreds of artists, writers (Gogol, Chekhov), politicians (Andre Gromyko, Boris Yeltsin, Nikita Khrushchev), military leaders, actors, composers (Shostakovich, Prokofiev), and the great and not-so-great like Joseph Stalin's wife, Nadezhda Alliluyeva Stalina, who was 31 when she died. (Until I looked her up at "Find-A-Grave," I thought she was a suicide victim, but evidence points to her possible murder by... who else? Her husband who killed between six and 20 million of his own people. Where is her biography? Another story, one of many to be found in cemeteries.) (Why are Mr. Khrushchev and Mr. Yeltsin not buried at the Kremlin?)

Here is a link to names of the dead in Novodevichy.

        Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow

The grave of the first president of Russia, Boris Yeltsin, 1931-2007, Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018, near the entrance/Patricia Leslie  

The grave of Raisa Gorbacheva, 1932-1999, wife of Mikhail Gorbachev, Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

The grave of Premier Nikita Khrushchev (1894-1971). (See his bust in the center,) Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy Cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy's namesake is its neighbor, the Novodevichy Convent, on the other side of a "great wall" which separates the cemetery from the convent which was founded in 1524. It was the home of Eudoxia Fedorovna Lopukhina (1669-1731), first wife of Peter the Great (1669-1725), and Peter's half-sister, Sophia (1657-1704), both women whom Peter stashed in the convent to get rid of them. (Sophia plotted against Peter and died here.) 

Novodevichy Convent's wall borders the cemetery, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy Convent wall at the cemetery, near the confinement rooms of Sophia, Peter the Great's half-sister, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Grounds at Novodevichy Convent, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie  

Novodevichy Convent chapel, Moscow, 2018/Patricia Leslie 

          Tikhvim Cemetery, St. Petersburg

The entrance to Tikhvim Cemetery, St. Petersburg, where a small visitor's fee ($2, adults; 70 cents, children and students) is charged. (I often consider how much institutions rely on and appreciate these admission prices. Here, it 's well worth the "price of admission"!) On the left above is the "old" part of the cemetery and on the right, the "new" with the graves of Tchaikovsky, Dostoevsky, Rimsky-Korsakov, Glinka, Mussorgsky, and many more/Patricia Leslie

Tikhvim, called the "Necropolis of Masters of Arts," opened in 1823. During "Soviet times" in the 1930s, the bodies of many artists were exhumed from graves around St. Petersburg and re-buried here. It is part of the State Museum of Urban Sculpture.

The grave of Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky, 1840-1893, in the "new" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

The grave of Fyodor Dostoevsky, 1821-1881, in the "new" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

 In the "new" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

The grave of composer Mikail Ivanovich Glinka, 1804-1857, in the "new" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie


 In the "new" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

In the "new" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

The "old" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

The "old" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

A child's tomb in the "old" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

The "old" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

The "old" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

The "old" section of Tikhvin Cemetery, St. Petersburg, 2018/Patricia Leslie

      Russian Orthodox Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska

A view of Sitka, Alaska from near the Russian Cemetery, 2019/Patricia Leslie

The Russians first came to Sitka, Alaska in 1741 but few have remained to take care of their 200-year-old cemetery with 1,500 to 1,600 graves,  most plots covered now by vegetation, trees, and weeds. A quick visual survey gives the impression that maybe 100 persons are buried in these creepy, hilly grounds which is romantic in its own way, but not a place for scaredy-cats like me, to spend Halloween or anytime here alone which is what I was at the cemetery that day. (Bear watch! Wherever you go in Alaska, bear warnings [and guns] are omnipresent, guns to ward off the bears. A museum employee told me he has wrangled with bears on shores over salmon he caught while standing to fish and with eyes turning constantly for...bear watch!) 

The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska with some headstones made from ballasts of Russian ships, according to Alaska.org. Most of the few visible headstones at the Sitka cemetery are broken and in disrepair/Patricia Leslie

Sitka is a beautiful community on an island along the outer coast of the Inside Passage, accessible only by plane, ship, or boat.  At Sitka you'll find the Fort Rousseau Causeway State Historical Park, the World War II Japonski Island base, other islands and rental boats to row to extant bunkers, some where a machete would help weave a path through thick, five feet high weeds and still worth the effort to get there. (Budget cuts in 2015 led to Alaska's park service eliminating maintenance of a trail here.)


Some Sitka history: In the 1850s when Russian czar Alexander II needed money, the U.S. showed  interest in buying Alaska, but the U.S. was dealing with more important matters like the advent of the Civil War (1861-1865), and the death of a president before it could take a serious look at owning a territory about a fifth of the U.S.'s size then (375 million acres).  

But President Abraham Lincoln's successor, Andrew Johnson, pursued the purchase, and in 1867, the U.S. bought Alaska for $7.2 million or about two pennies an acre.

Labeled "Johnson's Polar Bear Garden," and (you, no doubt remember from school days) "Seward's Folly," by a vote of only one or "by a wide margin" (based on the websites you visit), the U.S. Senate agreed to the treaty. 

In Sitka, U.S. Secretary of State William Seward represented the U.S. at the ceremony which is commemorated now with a hilltop memorial, flag, markers, and a wide viewing span of the town and waterways.



October 18, Alaska Day, is a state holiday to honor the purchase of the territory by the U.S. Every Alaska Day volunteers spend hours cleaning up the cemetery.  It needs it!

 The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie

 The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie

The grave of Earl Williams Sr., U.S. Marine Corps, 1939-2014, Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie

 The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie

 The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie

 The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019. What is that brown clump in the center?/Patricia Leslie

 The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie

 The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie

 The Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska, 2019/Patricia Leslie

Inside the white picket fence adjacent to Sitka's Russian Cemetery (on the right amidst the trees) is the grave of Princess Aglaida Ivanovina Maksoutoff (1834-1862), "wife of Second Rank," the last Russian governor, Dimitri Maksoutoff,/Patricia Leslie

 The grave of Princess Aglaida Ivanovina Maksoutoff (1834-1862) in the Lutheran Cemetery adjacent to the Russian Cemetery in the trees, Sitka, Alaska, 2019. You see how dark the cemetery is during the day/Patricia Leslie

The grave of Princess Aglaida Ivanovina Maksoutoff (1834-1862) in the Lutheran Cemetery adjacent to the Russian Cemetery, Sitka, Alaska. A historical marker outlines the care of the grave. In 1924 Foster Mills discovered the princess's grave which he and his wife, Louise, maintained for 25 years when their son, Russell, and his wife, Monica, took care of it until 1992 when the Sitka Lutheran Church assumed responsibility/Patricia Leslie

America's Russian cemetery is a fascinating place to visit which I highly recommend when you're in Sitka.  And the other cemeteries, too, when you travel to Russia.  None to miss!  I always wished I had had more time to explore these jewels of Earth.

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