The Fall of the Dynasties: The Collapse of the Old Order: 1905-1922

by Edmond Taylor

“In the house of the Romanovs, as in that of the Atrides,” notes the Russian writer Merejkovsky, commenting on the 1905 revolution, “a mysterious curse descends from generation to generation. Murder and adultery, blood and mud, ‘the fifth act of a tragedy played in a brothel.’ Peter I kills his son; Alexander I kills his father; Catherine II kills her husband. And besides these great and famous victims, there are the mean, unknown and unhappy abortions of the autocracy, such as Ivan Antonovitch, suffocated like mice in dark corners, in the cells of the Schlusselburg. The block, the rope, and poison — these are the true emblems of the Russian autocracy.”