Biographies and Memoirs

Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses

Helen Rappaport. Four Sisters: The Lost Lives of the Romanov Grand Duchesses. This popular book, by the popular Romanov author Helen Rappaport (b. 1947-), draws extensively on previously unseen or unpublished letters, diaries and archival sources, as...

Biography of Empress Marie Fedorovna

Coryne Hall. Little Mother of Russia: A Biography of Empress Marie Fedorovna (1847-1928). Empress Marie Feodorovna, consort of the next-to-last Tsar of Russia (Alexander III, father of Nicholas II). A daughter of the king of Denmark, Marie exchanged the...

Memoirs of Count Bernstorff [1936]

Memoirs of Count Bernstorff. Translated from the German by Eric Sutton. Johann Heinrich von Bernstorff (1862-1939) was a German ambassador, politician, and all-around prime mover and shaker in the early 20th century. His father, Albrecht Graf von...

Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich: Supreme Commander of the Russian Army

Paul Robinson. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich: Supreme Commander of the Russian Army. Grand Duke Nikolai Nikolaevich Romanov (1856–1929) was appointed to the position of commander in chief of the largest army (6 million) in the world by Nicholas...

A Russian Princess Remembers

Ekaterina Meshcherskaya. A Russian Princess Remembers. The mesmerizing, well-written and harrowing memoirs of a Russian princess, her family and her 19th century life, and who survived the Russian revolution by staying in her home country. NY:...

Alexandra Kollontai. Lonely Struggle of the Woman Who Defied Lenin.

Alexandra Kollontai. The Lonely Struggle of the Woman Who Defied Lenin. Cathy Porter. NY: Dial Press, 1980. Alexandra Kollontai (1872-1952) was the only woman in Vladimir Lenin's government. She was the first woman to be a cabinet minister, and the...

A Captive Of Time: My Years With Pasternak

Olga Ivinskaya. A Captive Of Time: My Years With Pasternak. Biography, autobiography and memoirs of Ivinskaya, the inspiration for "Lara", the heroine in Dr. Zhivago. Translated by Max Hayward. NY: Doubleday, 1978. 462 pages with index, source of...

Pushkin: Man and His Age (biography)

Pushkin: The Man and His Age. Robin Edmonds. NY: St. Martin's Press, 1995. 1st edition. 303 pages. Index, chronology, bibliography, chapter notes. 1 copy only. Alexander Sergeyevich Pushkin's (1799-1837) short and dramatic life is at odds with his...

Alexander of Russia {Henri Troyat]

Henri Troyat. Alexander of Russia: Napoleon's Conqueror. 1982. Paperback, part of the Grove Great Lives Series. 336 pages. Used, like new. Touch of wear at the extremities, sound binding, no names or writing. In Paris and London, the crowds hailed him as...

Escape from the Soviets [1934]

Tatiana Tchernavin. Escape from the Soviets. Tchernavin (1887-1971) wrote one of the earliest accounts of escaping the Soviet Gulag system, along with her husband Vladimir V. Tchernavin. Both were arrested in the early 1930s, and her husband was...

Autobiography of John Hays Hammond [1935]

The Autobiography of John Hays Hammond. Volume II. NY: Farrar, Rinehart, 1935. First edition. Green cloth hardcover, gilt title on front cover, gilt titles on spine (not very visible due to sunning). Illustrations, bibliography and an extensive index...

Kyra Petrovskaya [1961]

Kyra Petrovskaya (1918-2018) was a Russian-American actress and author. Her autobiography chronicles Russian history from 1920 to the present day. She was descended from nobility, had a stage career in Russia, and ultimately survived the Siege of...

Flight of the Romanovs

The Flight Of The Romanovs: A Family Saga. John Curtis Perry and Constantine V. Pleshakov. A well-researched retelling of the history of the Romanovs, beginning with a young Alexander III in the 1860s, and ending with the death in 1960 of his daughter,...

Nicholas II: The Last Tsar [Photobiography]

Marvin Lyons. Edited by Andrew Wheatcroft. Nicholas II: The Last Tsar. This was one of the first, and is still one of the best, photobiographies on the remarkable life of Tsar Nicholas II and his family, spanning the years 1870 to 1918. The London...

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman

Catherine the Great: Portrait of a Woman. Robert Massie. NY: Random House, 2012. 672 pages. Maps, notes, bibliography, index and a reader's guide. Paperback in gently used condition. The eminent Russian history biographer Robert Massie applies his...

Peter the Great: His Life and World [Massie]

Peter the Great: His Life and World. Robert Massie. NY: Knopf, 1980. 1st edition. BOMC. 909 pages. Photos and maps, map endpapers. Some color illustrations. Hardcover with dustjacket in a clear protective jacket cover. Text good condition (few pages...

The Romanovs: 1613-1918

The Romanovs: 1613-1918. Well-received and well-reviewed mammoth overview of three centuries of the Romanovs by Cambridge-educated historian S. Montefiore, who combines rigorous intellectual scholarship with the storyteller talents of a novelist, which...

Journey Among Warriors [Eve Curie]

Journey Among Warriors [Eve Curie]. Eve Curie was the daughter of Marie and Pierre Curie, the discoverers of radium and Nobel Prize winners. As a news correspondent, her journey begins as the world is mired in war for just over two years, during which...

Man Who Killed Rasputin

Greg King. The Man Who Killed Rasputin: Prince Youssoupov and the Murder That Helped Bring Down the Russian Empire. Felix Youssoupov (aka Prince Felix Felixovich Yusupov) was rich, second in wealth only to the Romanovs. His family owned four palaces...

The Native's Return (Louis Adamic) 1934

Louis Adamic. The Native's Return: An American Immigrant Visits Yugoslavia And Discovers His Old Country. An autobiography and historical travel guide in three parts: Home Again in Carniola, The Coast and Mountain Regions, Belgrade and Croatia and a...