IN THE STEPS OF THE ROMANOVS: Author’s/Translator’s Note

Latest Book Translated directly from diary entries and personal papers of Romanov Family Members during the last two years of their lives.

The story of the downfall of the last ruling Romanov family is fairly well-known: following the Russian revolution, members of the family were arrested, imprisoned and ultimately executed without a trial. For many years, mystery surrounded the details around their murders, but after the fall of the Soviet Union, archives were gradually opened and investigations began. Around that time, the remains of the last Tsar and his family were found, and later, thorough scientific testing confirmed that the bodies of the entire family were accounted for (although the Russian Orthodox Church has not accepted them as authentic at the time of this writing).

The discovery of imperial remains led to a revival of interest in the family, as many of their personal documents—all carefully preserved—came to light. Today, after more than a quarter of a century, it seemed unlikely that anything new could be said about the last months and days of the Romanovs. But as it turned out – even to my own surprise – there was.

I started working on this manuscript with the intention of creating a simple, relatively short companion book for the 2018 centennial tour to Russia, called “In the Steps of the Romanovs”, organized by myself and managed by GET Educational Tours. I decided to strictly use primary documents and photographs to recount the final two years of Russia’s last imperial family in the places the tour would be covering.

However, as I did my research and translations, the manuscript seemed to take on a mind of its own, and kept growing. I was discovering more and more primary documents that I did not even realise existed, which I felt had to be included in this book.

So, before you is an almost 700 page volume, which of course is no longer a mere tour companion but a fully fledged book, which not only tells the familiar story in a unique way, but also provides a significant amount of new details.

I feel that this final result is one of the most accurate accounts of the last months of the Romanov imperial family, since it consists strictly of first hand accounts, with very minimal subjective commentary from the author. I hope you feel the same way and enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it.