Reign of Nicholas II [Oldenburg]

Product Description

The Reign of Emperor Nicholas II. Sergey Sergeevich Oldenburg. Washington: 1981. Facsimile reprint of Munich edition of 1949. By the Publication of the Society for the Propagation of Russian National and Patriotic Literature (Общество распространения русской национальной и патриотической литературы). Black and white illustrations. Softcover, brown covers. 644 pages. Text in (Old) Russian (Старорусский). About fine, some nominal signs of use. Binding sound. 1" darkened spot title page top right. No names or marks. 

Note: originally, the first volume was published in 1939 in Belgrade (Serbia), and the second volume in 1949 in Munich (Germany). A complete two-volume set is rare. The first Russian edition published in post-Soviet Russia was in 1991. Numerous reprints have been issued since.

Prof. Sergei Sergeevich Oldenburg (1888-1940), the son of an academician, was a Russian historian and journalist. His most important work is considered "a major document in modern Russian historiography. The final contribution of a Russian nationalist historian, it provides uniquely sensitive insights into the character, personality, and policies of Russia’s last tsar. It has no rival as a political biography of Nicholas II and is without peer as a comprehensive history of his reign.”

It was the Supreme Monarchist Council, a monarchist organization created by Russian émigrés in 1921, that commissioned Oldenburg to write the ultimate comprehensive history of the reign of Emperor Nicholas II. Oldenburg had access to a unique collection of documents, including copies of authentic historical acts of the Russian Empire held in the Russian Embassy in Paris on Rue Grenelle. Long before the First World War, duplicates of the originals had been made as a precautionary measure, and sent to the Russian Embassy in Paris for storage. In October 1917, the Provisional Government appointed Vasily Alekseyevich Maklakov (1869-1957), to replace Alexander Izvolsky as Russia’s Ambassador to France. When he arrived in Paris, Maklakov learned about the takeover by the Bolsheviks. Regardless, he continued to occupy the splendid mansion of the Russian embassy for seven years, until France found it necessary to recognize the Bolshevik government. Fearing that the Embassy’s archival documents would fall into the hands of the Bolsheviks, Maklakov packed them up, including Oldenburg’s manuscript, the Okhrana archives, among other items and arranged for their transfer to the Stanford University.