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I am currently purging my 'library' .  One of the books earmarked for a new home is Russia 1904-1924 by Eric Baschet.  

 

A photo record of those years, many are too harrowing to look too closely at, The squalor and despair of Tsarist Russia gave way to the horrors of famine.  Such pictures don't lie, they allow the viewer to come to their own conclusion. 

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Nicholas II definitely ended things with Kshesinskaya once he was able to overbore the longstanding objections of his father, Alexander III, and (especially) his formidable mother, Marie Feodorovna, to his marrying Alix of Hesse. Whatever Nicholas may or may not have been as a ruler, he was always a loving and faithful husband to Alexandra and a devoted father to their five children: the Tsarevich Alexei and 'OTMA' (the Grand Duchesses Olga, Tatiana, Maria and Anastasia).

 

If you're interested, here's more about the two Grand Dukes who played a big part in Kshesinskaya's later life:

 

Sergei Mikhailovich (first cousin to Nicholas' father, Alexander III):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_Sergei_Mikhailovich_of_Russia

(He would die in the Revolution as would two of his brothers.)

 

Andrei Vladimirovich (first cousin to Nicholas himself):

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grand_Duke_Andrei_Vladimirovich_of_Russia

(He survived the Revolution but just barely.) 

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Whatever Nicholas may or may not have been as a ruler, he was always a loving and faithful husband to Alexandra and a devoted father to their five children:

 

Happy families are nothing to sneeze at, but isolation in the family cocoon proved disastrous, tightly bound to his wife's apron strings as Nicholas was. Between his parents and Alexandra, I fear he didn't get much of a break.

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6 hours ago, dirac said:

 

Happy families are nothing to sneeze at, but isolation in the family cocoon proved disastrous, tightly bound to his wife's apron strings as Nicholas was.

That's fair. The Dowager Empress Marie would have agreed with you. As early as March 7/19, 1897, she wrote the following to her father (the King of Denmark):

 

"They (Nicholas and Alexandra) are very pleased at spending the winter at Tsarskoe, where dear Nicky does, indeed, have a bit more freedom and can be outside in the good air more than here in the city. But it does have its less positive sides in that she (Alexandra) hardly sees any people, and that they are living far too much by themselves and do not even see the poor ladies and gentlemen of their entourage who live there. Well, that will probably come with time, we must hope." (Maria Feodorovna, Empress of Russia, 1997, p. 176.)

 

And, of course, that time never came.

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Just as FYI...no intention to push my personal beliefs. Link to the Romanov Holy Martyrs icon, as it relates to the issues surrounding the topic of this thread (why some in the Church are protesting the film):

 

c52bbd05b06664eb23b2361fbd7716d1.jpg

 

 

 

 

 

 

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The trailer for the film certainly wouldn't tempt me into a cinema, is anyone saying it has artistic merit?  MK isn't a bad subject for a bio-pic. particularly as she went from riches to rags, though other grande horizontales of the period were more interesting.  As royal paramours go she was historically pretty low rent compared with the likes of say Diane de Poitiers or Piers Gaveston and even Lola Montez was given a title.  Plenty of references to her in ballet history books and she could certainly dance, but she comes across as a negative character, though I admired her stoicism in adversity.

 

I take it MacMillan's Anastasia hasn't been danced in Russia? 

 

After all those years of repressive censorship under the communists, seems the new Russians are no better, worse perhaps when the mob takes over.

Edited by Mashinka
typo
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I suppose Matilda's monarch was pretty "low rent," too if you think about it. But Kschessinska 's affair with Nicholas took place before he ascended the throne, so comparisons to royal favorites who wielded political power don't really hold. I can't say that their romance sounds very interesting on the merits, even Kschessinska 's own account.

 

Didn't realize represson and censorship came in with the commies. (The Russian people really haven't gotten much of a break.)

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17 hours ago, abatt said:

Here is an Op Ed from yesterday's NYTimes which discusses the subject biopic, but more broadly talks about cultural repression under Putin.

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/14/opinion/artist-putin-russia-serebrennikov.html

 

 

Scary! And I notice that the prosecutor is talking like people here in America where people don't want to believe newspapers or facts, so we might be headed in the same direction concerning the arts! Scary times right now! One of our founding fathers, I believe, said something like people are very quick to want to censor things they disagree with but then there is no free thought or free artistic expression.

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I saw the film yesterday. Huge dissappointment. It feels like a grander, augmented cinematic version of a gossip History Channel episode. Very unrealistic feeling. The ballet sequences also felt out of place, never masking the fact of being a portray of contemporary dancers doing contemporary movements in period clothing. It was a bit boring, IMO.

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On 8/20/2019 at 7:04 PM, cubanmiamiboy said:

I saw the film yesterday. Huge dissappointment. It feels like a grander, augmented cinematic version of a gossip History Channel episode. Very unrealistic feeling. The ballet sequences also felt out of place, never masking the fact of being a portray of contemporary dancers doing contemporary movements in period clothing. It was a bit boring, IMO.

Thank you for the review. Too bad.

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